Thoughts and after-thoughts

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THOUGHTS AND
AFTER-THOUGHTS

*T*HE cover design and decorations
are by LOVAT FRASER.

HERBERT BEERBOHM
TREE BY

J. S. SARGENT, R.A.

Thoughts and
After=Thoughts

By Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Cassell and Company, Limited

London, New^ YorK, Toronto O Melbourne

1913

TO

MINE ENEMY

I DEDICATE
THE FAULTS OF THIS BOOK

TO

MY FRIEND

I DEDICATE

WHAT VIRTUE IT MAY HAVE,

HOPING THUS TO GIVE PLEASURE TO BOTH.

H. B. T.

C ONXENTS

PAGE

Our Betters : A Medley of Considered

Indiscretions ...,., 1

The Living Shakespeare : A Defence of

Modern Taste ..... 37

Jim : The Vindication of a Misunderstood

Microbe . . ... . . 73

The Imaginative Faculty . . . . .91

Hamlet from an Actor's Prompt Book . . 121

Some Interesting Fallacies of the Modern

Stage . 159

The Humanity of Shakespeare . . . 191

The Tempest in a Teacup .... 209

King Henry VIII 225

On Closing the Book that Shakespeare

Wrote . ... 301

OUR BETTERS

A MEDLEY OF CONSIDERED INDISCRETIONS

B

A Medley of Considered Indiscretions

TT might easily be imagined that I intend to
* flatter the great, to admonish the Httle, to up-
hold the ethies of vested interests, and to make
" Whatever is, is right " the burden of my
essay.

I have no such intention. There is no more
mischievous doctrine than that impHcd in the
phrase " Our Betters " as commonly used.
There is no more pitiable creed than that summed
up in the old rhyme, spoken with fervour by
thousands of lips, and sung in unison by
thousands of hearts :

" God bless the Squire and his relations,
And keep us in our proper stations."

Gloss it over with good manners, or what
we may, this fact remains : every man is to

3

Our Betters

himself the most important thing on earth ; and
the first thing he requires is self-respect, that he
may the better respect others.

The distinction which is born of self-respect is
often met in the peasant — the man who is nearest
to Nature. To create this sense is the first duty
of the State. The care of the individual is the
safeguard of the community : the assertion of the
individual conscience over the conglomerate law
of force is the triumph of free mind over the
tyranny of matter.

The world is undergoing a sea-change ; the old
landmarks are being swept away, the barbed wire
fences which separated the classes are being
relegated to the limbo of the human scrap-heap.
As in our time Science has progressed with giant
strides — I mean the science appertaining to tangible
things, the science of bodies — so I believe are we
on the threshold of a spiritual science, the science
of a higher sociology. Its premonitory vibrations
are felt all over the world. Wherever we put
our ears to the ground we hear a tiny tapping
at the earth's crust : it is the upspringing of a
new social creed ; it is the call of a new
religion ; it is the intellectual enfranchisement of
mankind.

Vaguely we all apprehend it, but we are slow
to give it articulate utterance. I suppose that

4

Our Betters

most of us when we are young — I mean those wlio
think and feel — are by nature rebels. It is only
in middle life that we learn to toe the line of
expedieney, the line of least resistance. We fall
into step with those whom we call Our Betters
— those who are in power. We are creatures of
habit in mind as well as in body; and when we
are old (some are born old) we cast aside the
unworldly wisdom which our ethical instinct
taught us, and put on the worldly wisdom of
vested interests. We no longer think and feel
for ourselves — we cease to be individuals,
we are swallowed up in and become part of a
system ; we adopt the machine-made social laws
of Our Betters. It is to our advantage. We
are on the make. " Take what you can — give
what you must" is the motto of the utilitarian.

This worldly wisdom is forced upon us in many
ways : by the pinch of poverty, by the greater
ease with which it enables us to climb the greasy
pole of fame, by the avoidance of friction in our
relations with our fellow men, and by that sym-
pathetic and unconscious absorption of the pre-
vailing ideas that surround us — the cult of Good
Form. We are creatures of habit inwardly and
outwardly.

On that symbol of respectability, the frock
coat, we wear two buttons at the back, though
why few of us know. A reverence for buttons

5

Our Betters

is indeed one of the most curious attributes of
our common humanity. In the same way we
wear the habit of our minds ready made, buttons
and all. Gentility is our watchword ; we chorus
the common hymn of respectability.

I remember Swinburne the poet telling me
with a tinge of sadness of his own evolution.
He and William Morris were friends in youth.
" At that time," said he, " William Morris was
a Tory of the bluest blood, while I was a red-
hot Republican. Now," he sighed, " Morris
addresses Socialist mobs in Trafalgar Square, and
I write patriotic odes for the St. James's Gazette.'"
That is the see-saw of life.

It seems to me that the rarest thing in humanity
is independence of mind, the faculty of thinking
and acting for oneself ; the power to fulfil oneself
at all costs.

To be oneself is the greatest luxury in the
world, and I am bound to say it is the most
expensive.

If we may regard tact as one of the minor
virtues, let us not despise the valour of indiscretion,
for to be indiscreet with discretion, to be gay
without being flippant, to be serious without
being earnest, is not this the philosophy of life ?

It is this independence of mind which is my
theme. It is easy to have the courage of other

6

Our Betters

people's opinions ; to have the courage of one's
own instinct is the badge of the few. To be con-
tent to be in the minority in past times was to
dwell in the shadow of palaces and in the shade
of prisons.

But there is still injustice in the world ; we
have, thank Heaven, still the luxury of scorn. Out
of our large scorn we weave our little epigrams !

" The rain it raineth every day

Upon the just and unjust fellow,
But chiefly on the just, because

The unjust has the just's umbrellow."

But the minority of to-day is often the majority
of to-morrow, as the majority of to-day is often
the minority of to-morrow ! (Every truth has
its paradox.)

Be on your guard always against the
" compact Liberal majority " of which Ibsen
speaks so eloquently in the mouth of that
splendid but unfortunate altruist. Doctor Stock-
mann. The Doctor fmds that the drains in
his native town, which is a health resort, are
polluting its waters, and he at once deter-
mines that the mischief must be made public,
that a new system of drainage must be in-
stalled. But his brother, the burgomaster, a
self-righteous and self-seeking person, denounces
him for his wickedness. Would he ruin his native
town ? No ; the scandal must be hushed up,

7

Our Betters

the situation must be dealt with diplomatically.
Doctor Stockmann sticks to his guns, holds a
meeting, and is howled down, his windows are
smashed, his trousers are torn, his practice is taken
away from him. He addresses the meeting :

" Yes, by Heaven, I am going to revolt
against the lie that truth belongs exclusively to the
majority. What sort of truths do the majority
rally round ? Truths so stricken in years that
they are sinking into decrepitude. When a truth
is so old as that, gentlemen, it's in a fair way to
become a lie. A normally constituted truth lives
— let us say — as a rule, seventeen or eighteen years,
at the outside twenty ; very seldom more. All
these majority truths are like last year's salt
pork ; they're like rancid, mouldy ham, producing
all the moral scurvy that devastates society. . . .
{Interruptions.) I'm keeping as closely to my
text as I possibly can ; for my text is precisely
this — that the masses, the majority, this devil's
own compact majority — it's that, I say, that's
poisoning the sources of our spiritual life, and
making a plague-spot of the ground beneath our
feet. . . . (" Shame ! Shame .' ") And now I'll
make it clear to you all — and on scientific grounds,
too — that the masses are nothing but the raw
material that must be fashioned into a people.
(Interruptions.) Is it not so with all other living
creatures ? I say it's absolutely unpardonable of

8

Our Betters

the PeopWs Messenger to proclaim, day out, day
in, the false doctrine that it's the masses, the
multitude, the compact majority, that mono-
polise liberality and morality — and that vice and
corruption and all sorts of spiritual uneleanness
ooze out of culture. No ; it's stupidity, poverty,
the ugliness of life, that do the devil's work ! In
a house that isn't aired and swept every day —
in such a house, I say, within two or three
years, people lose the power of thinking or acting
morally. Lack of oxygen enervates the conscience.
And there seems to be precious little oxygen in
many and many a house in this town, since the
whole compact majority is unscrupulous enough
to want to found its future upon a quagmire of
lies and fraud." [The meeting breaks up in
uproar.^

In the last act, poor Doctor Stockmann, his
soul a-blaze and his body a-bleed, finds that his
independence has cost him his livelihood ; his
family is on the brink of starvation, and he
cries out : " A man should never put on his best
trousers when he goes out to battle for truth and
freedom." With what a wonderful sense of im-
partiality does Ibsen hold the scales between the
two brothers — the one the utilitarian, the other
the idealist ! The author sees the weak spot in
the great man's armour. He sees also what is
worldly-wise in the little man's argument. Great

9

Our Betters

men have the defects of their quahties. Little
men have the qualities of their defects, and they
often triumph by their baseness. Their sword is
flattery, blackmail is their armour.

From the purely worldly point of view Stock-
mann had the worst of it — for the time being.
But let us hope that in an unwritten last act
he got his reward. Of course, it may be said
that this hot-headed hero might have gone about
his reforming in a more discreet manner. He
might have set out to inaugurate a reform move-
ment from the various sections of society that
would have profited by his indiscretion. First,
he would have set up a rival company, and let
in "at par " all those who would support his
movement ; the contract for putting in the new
sanitary machinery would have been given to
those who would vote solidly for his cause. He
would have proclaimed that the pollution was
directly traceable to a Conservative or Liberal
source, choosing for his attack whichever party
happened to be the more unpopular at the mo-
ment. He would have called a meeting of work-
men and told them that the bloated councillors
who ruled the town were endeavouring to keep
the bread out of their mouths, that they were
despoiling their potential widows and orphans.
All these divergent interests he would have
mashed together into a party, and he would have

lO

^ Our Betters

called his party the " Party of Purity." No doubt
a statue would have been ereeted to him by his
grateful fellow-citizens, and to its fund he himself
would have sent the first contribution under the
name of " Anonymous Admirer." But he lacked
the virtue of tact. He was not one of those
politicians whose blood and judgment are so well
commingled that they will not allow their sense
of right to interfere with their interests. Valour
in the weak is always dangerous.

One should never hazard until one has cogged
the dice of Fate. The native alcohol of a san-
guine temperament is apt to lead one into strange
quagmires.

A little mouse strayed into a wine cellar.
Happening to step into a small puddle of whisky,
he licked his paw. " H'm ! rather nice that ! "
So he dipped in another paw ; then all four
paws ; finally he lay down and rolled himself in
the spirit, had a good lick all over, and felt most
royally elated. Then, staggering to the head of
the staircase, leaping up two steps at a time, he
yelled out : " Where is that damned cat that
chased me yesterday ? "

It is only by combination that weak units
make themselves strong. One of these days the
mice may set up a trade union — and then ?
Well, I suppose they will have to hire a terrier
to espouse their cause !

II

Our Betters

However, my theme is not mice, but men.
Union among men is one of the burning
questions of the hour, and here I may allow
myself the indiscretion of touching upon the
great question of Trade Unionism, a question
upon which I can speak with some little ex-
perience.

I suppose that every new movement, if suc-
cessful, brings in its train a certain amount of
tyranny. " In righting wrong, we sometimes
wrong the right." The great struggle between
Capital and Labour which is now going on is but
the result of education. Education has placed a
weapon in the hands of the democracy. It is a two-
edged weapon, and its right use can only be taught
by a yet greater, a higher education. Liberty gives
birth to new tyrannies, and there can be no doubt
that a certain amount of injustice must accom-
pany all great reforms. So it is that the indi-
vidual may for the time being suffer from the
tyranny of Labour. But in the long run the
individual will assert himself — the freedom of
the individual to fulfil himself is the strength
of the State. Each must be free to work out
his own economic salvation. The liberty which
cripples the efforts of the fittest is but another
form of tyranny — the tyranny of the weak over
the strong. We have the new liberty, for instance,
which dictates compulsory closing on Thursdays,

12

Our Betters

in order that we may have the vitality to rest
from Saturday to Monday.

When I speak of a higher education, I do not
mean the useless, outworn education which we
wear as the superfluous buttons on our coat-
tails, but an education which shall be largely
philosophical, which shall teach the laws of
health, of happiness, and of self-esteem of which
modesty is the natural outcome — the kind of
education that Marcus Aurelius suggested in his
" Reflections."

I venture to think that much of the education
we inherit from our forefathers is unsuitable to
the conditions of the present time. In this higher
education we must begin at the beginning ; we
must begin with the children. If children were
taught a doggerel with a tune which should em-
body the simple laws of health, the rudimentary
laws of happiness, they would never forget them
all their lives ; but these things are taken for
granted. When they are young, boys are taught
to look down upon other nations. They are
taught to be jingoes. Were they taught in their
infancy a world-patriotism, there would be fewer
wars. I have no doubt that there has been of
late years a great advance in this respect,
but I remember a little incident that looms
out of my first visit to America. It was at
Chicago, and I was visiting at the house of

13

Our Betters

highly cultured people. Their little boy of eight
years old came in from his history lesson. "Are
you an Englishman ? " he asked. It was useless
to deny it, for my accent betrayed me. " I am,"
I blurted. At this, he struck me with his little
fist. " Well, take that," he said, " for upsetting
the tea."

It is sad to think that we often learn too late
by bitter experience what we might have learnt
as children, when habits are quickly acquired.

Were we taught in our youth that happiness
does not depend upon riches, nor honour upon
honours, that our greatest pride should be to
fulfil ourselves instead of aping " Our Betters,"
there would be less unhappiness in life. We learn
wisdom only by our failures. Philosophy is a
filly got by Common Sense out of Misfortune.
How little wisdom, how little understanding of
the real essentials of life, do we often find in those
who grow prematurely old and cynical in the
pursuit of a decorative but not always useful
University career ! Their point of view is nar-
rowed ; they have lost their individuality ; they
have imbibed from their " Betters " ideas of good
form which they never shake off ; they have lost
their power to " do."

Take, for instance, the son of a manufacturer
who by his own effort has built up a great busi-
ness. The father sends his son to the University,

Our Betters

as " Our Betters " do. What often happens is
that the son returns to his home unfitted to
carry on the work whieh his father's energy
initiated. And what has he got in return ? The
right to wear a coloured ribbon round his straw
hat ! Those precious years between eighteen and
twenty-four have been wasted — those precious
years in which he should have passed many a
milestone on the road of life. He emerges from
the University barren of initiative ; he is no
longer an individual ; he is but a devotee of
good form. The factory over which he should
have presided is run by a salaried manager ; the
foreigner outstrips him in the competition ;
he has not the pride in that which his father
made, in that which made his father. He is a
victim to " Our Betters." But he has become
a gentleman.

And what is a gentleman ? A gentleman is
one who does not care a button whether he is
one or not. It has always seemed to me that
the greatest men I have met in life have been
distinguished by a simplicity and a naturalness,
the counterpart of which one only finds in
peasants.

I remember the thing which struck me most
when I first visited the House of Lords was
the extraordinarily careless manner in which
the peers were attired. They appeared to be a

Our Betters

procession of savants and market gardeners,
with a sprinkling of " bucks." The late Lord
Salisbury looked like a Viking who had casually
strayed into Conduit Street. By the by, it is
recorded of that great statesman that on one
State occasion he wore the Order of the Garter
on the wrong shoulder — a truly lovable touch in
a great man. But, of course, we cannot become
great by wearing our garters on the wrong leg,
any more than we can become geniuses by brush-
ing our hats the wrong way.

How easy it is to be a genius until one has
done something ! Everybody is a potential genius
until he has tried to do something in the world.
Woe be to him who does something, for to be
understood is to be found out.

As soon as you have done something the noble
army of log-rollers who were at your back will
be facing you, fiery pen in hand — and then,
what an awakening ! The process of acquiring a
swelled head is a most fascinating and pleasant
state. It is only the subsequent shrinkage which
hurts. I know these little coteries. I am ac-
quainted with their jargon. They, too, have
their little protective trade unions which seek
by their intrigues to " down the tools " of the
workman who " does." To be peculiar, to be
original, is the vain endeavour of their existence.
This striving after originality is the greatest con-

i6

Our Betters

vention in the world. The really strong man is
unconscious of his originality ; he does what he
does because he must. We only do well what we
cannot help doing.

The other day I found myself in the Paris
Salon looking upon the display of Post-Impres-
sionist or Futurist and Cubist pictures.

I am only too ready to appreciate any new
phase of Art, so long as it is " truly new " or
" newly true " ; but I am bound to say that this
latest development of the new art seems to me
frankly insincere where it is not obviously
unhealthy.

After a time I turned from the pictures to
watch the faces of the spectators, and while in
some cases the look was that of humorous toler-
ance, it was mostly one of set bewilderment.
The public went about silently, as though wan-
dering among the inmates of a madhouse. The
word of critical wisdom was, of course, uttered by
a child. A boy of seven years old stood before a
picture and, clapping his hands, turned to his
mother and said, " Oh, mamma, I have never
seen a green dog before ! "

In referring as I did to a University educa-
tion, do not imagine that I undervalue the
tremendous importance of such intellectual train-
ing as our Universities afford to all those who

Our Betters

intend to follow learned professions, to whom
indeed the academic study during these years is
absolutely essential ; but I imagine that there
are many callings to which the lengthy sojourn in
a University is absolutely disadvantageous, and
that the acquisition of a mere social betterment
is frequently ruinous to the initiative of those
concerned.

You may be sure that when you hear the
same complaint uttered by so many independent
persons, in so many sections of the community,
there is something wrong in the system, and that
a revolution is at hand. It is another case of too
much reverence for buttons.

The great book from which to learn is the
book of life ; the great university is the storm
and stress of the world. A man's education
should depend on his individual job. A sailor, for
instance, is none the worse for not having a
University education : there is no class of men
that is more keenly intelligent in grappling with
the essentials of life than are sailors. Why ?
Because they are in touch with Nature. They
have to deal with the elements ; they are eye to
eye with the realities of Nature, and consequently
they are more indifferent than most to the little
socialities which vex the souls of those whose
surroundings are more artificial. How little all
these little social bickerings seem when we are in

i8

Our Betters

touch with Nature ! How infinitely ridiculous do
these petty distinctions become when we look at
the stars !

We often bear a great tragedy, a great sor-
row, more calmly than we do the minor annoy-
ances of life — fleas are more disconcerting than
elephants. A friend of mine told me that when-
ever he was sorely troubled about a loss on the
Stock Exchange or the non-attainment of a peer-
age, he threw open his window, walked out into
the garden, looked at the stars, and laughed —
lit his pipe — and was at peace with the world.
So the late Lord Tennyson, when staying at a
country house where the neighbouring lumin-
aries of the county had been invited to meet him,
was asked by his host after dinner whether he
would like to look at the stars. The great poet
took up the telescope, and, forgetting himself
and others, gazed for twenty minutes at the
wonders of the heavens. " Well, what do you
think, Mr. Tennyson ? " inquired his host. " I
don't think much of our county families," replied
Tennyson. In moments such as these, when we
contemplate the vast solemnities of creation, the
sociological amenities of life are apt to take their
due perspective.

There are many kinds of snobbery — there is
the snobbery of riches ; there is the snobbery of

19

Our Betters

power, the snobbery of aristocracy (thouch I am
bound to say that so far as my observation goes
the class which is least tainted with this failing
is the aristocracy). There is the snobbery of
Socialism, there is the snobbery of dogma, and
there is the snobbery of culture — the snobbery of
what Americans call the " high-brows " — perhaps
the most fearsome snobbery of all. Alas ! not all
people who are gifted with intellect have the saving
grace of intelligence ; they lack that tolerance
which is characteristic of all great and noble
minds. Kindness is the crowning triumph. There
is nothing meaner than the contempt of the
greatly endowed for those less favoured than
themselves. There is nothing finer than modesty
in the great, for that modesty implies a divine
humour.

There is one direction in which it seems to
me the imitation of Our Betters is most lament-
able, and that is in the pronunciation of the
English language. And here, of course, the Stage
can fulfil a useful mission in preserving the vigour
and the breadth of Shakespeare's tongue ; indeed,
it is difficult to be lackadaisical in speaking his
virile verse.

Let us consider the way the language is spoken
by the poorer classes. The Cockney accent has
had many vicissitudes ; it has undergone great
changes in our time. Take the case of Dickens.

20

Our Betters

We know that Mr. Wellcr was very shaky as to
his w's : " Spell it with a ' wee,' Sammy." This
particular vulgarism has quite gone out of
abuse.

The dropping of the " h " will no doubt be a
thing of the past in the next generation, as it is
regarded as vulgar in the present. Again, the
dropping of the " g " is a vulgarity in persons of
the lower classes, as it is a sign of smartness in
Our Betters.

The preservation of the strength of the English
language is indeed all-important. The very latest
Cockney accent is what I may call of the order
" genteel." The vowels are squeezed almost out
of recognition. " Home " becomes " home " ;
" time " becomes " taime " ; " town " becomes
" teown " ; " girl " becomes " giairl." It seems
to me that the children are taught in the schools
this terrible jargon of gentility, to which the
vigorous vulgarity of the early Victorian Cockney
was infinitely preferable. The imitation of Our
Betters is once more to be deprecated. There
is nothing so terrible as " refainement."

Every man should have a pride in the par-
ticular work to which he is called. Instead of
thinking only of the reward which that work brings
him, every workman should learn to love and to
take a pride in his craft ; it should be to him even

21

Our Betters

more important than football. I do not mean
the mere laying of bricks — that will soon be done
by machinery ; I mean that work into which he
can put himself, his own being, his own skill ; and
there are hundreds of these crafts. The painter
feels this pride — Raphael and Rembrandt, Joshua
Reynolds and Watts felt it. The great architects
of the world feel it. The sculptor's hand moves
to it. Benvenuto Cellini — his work was himself,
his better self. Even so does the good gardener
feel a pride in his garden ; he, again, is near to
Nature. The maker of wall-papers, the weaver
of silks, the inventor of subtle machinery, the
drawer on wood and brass, the driver of a motor-
car, should share this pride of handiwork. All
these things can be made to have a value beyond
the mere wages they bring. There is the joy of
the workman in his work.

And every man to-day can participate in the
beauty of art ; he has his place in the Sun of the
intellectual world. A shilling will buy him a
Shakespeare. Throughout the country nowadays
the working classes have access to the art treasures
owned by the rich who are willing to share them
with their fellow men.

I have expressed the opinion that education
brings certain dangers in its train which have to
be counteracted by a yet higher education. So

22

Our Betters

also have the efforts of Science in her battles with
Nature to be eked out by a yet deeper science.
Take the most recent scientific development —
that of Eugenics. In former days Nature killed
off the weaklings in the most drastic and practical
manner by consumption and by various diseases ;
man had to stand the test put upon him by the
assaults of an army of unseen and unknown
microbes ; the unfit were rooted out by the brutal
laws of Nature — only the strong survived. To-day
when Nature says to Man, " Thou shalt die,"
Science steps in and says, " No, thou mayest live."
Then comes Nature's retort, " If thou causest the
unfit to survive, then I will afflict their offspring
with infirmity even to the third and fourth genera-
tion." To which Science replies, " Very well.
Nature, we will strike a compromise — I will see
that the weakly shall not be born into this world."
And there we stand at present — hesitant as to
how to carry out our side of the contract. Science
is once more Nature's slave.

It is always hazardous to beat one's head
against the brick wall of Nature, for it is apt to
bleed — the head, I mean. I suppose it is but
logic that if the lower forms of animals prosper
by scientific selection, so must Man, the highest
development of animal life, be subject to better-
ment by such a process.

Of all the movements which are in progress for

23

Our Betters

the development of the race, I imagine that none
is capable of such far-reaching results to the
health, the moral, and the sane patriotism of the
inhabitants of these islands as is the Boy Scout
movement. And this development seems to me
to tend more than any other to do away with class
distinctions. In countries where universal service
prevails every man who serves in the ranks for
his country feels himself the equal of him who is
his comrade in arms. The handling of a musket
is a great leveller of mankind — in more senses
than one. See these manly little fellows as they
trudge along the roads — how picturesque they
look, how businesslike ! Contrast them with the
slouching boys who are attired in the ordinary
trousers, shell- jacket, and top-hatted garb of the
public school. Surely a survival of the ugliest
costume the world has ever invented ! I imagine,
too, that the spirit of independence which is part
of the training of the Boy Scout will be a factor
of enormous importance in the generations which
are growing into manhood. The handy-man is
always to the fore when it comes to the test. How
much more profitable than to sit at a football
match watching great big athletes kicking a
ball when it is down ! And the comradeship of
the Boy Scouts inculcates good fellowship and
good humour — very necessary qualities to enable
us to bear the tragedies of life which come to every

24

Our Betters

man ; and if we learn to " rough it " on the road
of Life with our fellows, we are often able to lighten
a friend of half his burden by counter-weighting it
with sympathy. Of what inestimable value, too,
is a knowledge of First Aid ! How useful is such
knowledge in every walk of life ! Only the other
day I became personally acquainted with its value.
A motor-car had run into a wall, close to my home
in the country ; the inmate of the car was bleed-
ing to death. Had any of the three bystanders
known the rudiments of First Aid, he would have
been able to stanch the discharge from the artery,
and so saved another's life. Let us not despise
the handy-man.

It may be argued that the Boy Scout move-
ment may have a tendency to make the nation
militant at a time when the higher ideals of
humanity are asserting themselves. Quite so.
But Wisdom may be found at either extreme
of a line — make a circle of the line and the two
points meet. Universal disarmament is the ideal
for which every right-minded person strives. I
suppose no one has a greater horror of war than
that great soldier who has been calling aloud and
eloquently for universal service — I mean Lord
Roberts. But we can only deal with facts as we
find them in our generation. We believe that
the most civilising factor for mankind is the
supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race — the defence

25

Our Betters

of that supremacy is therefore the business of
Great Britain. Foreign nations may claim, and
claim with reason, that England took her colonies
by force. The past history of the world has been
to take what one wants and trust to one's luck
and one's power to keep it. This is the peculiar
faculty of the English people.

I once heard of an Englishman who, in spite
of a total ignorance of foreign languages, when
travelling abroad always contrived to get what
he wanted by a very simple expedient. He had
just returned from a visit to Germany. " How
did you manage to get on ? " asked a friend.
" Famously," he replied. " But you don't know
one word of German," said the other. " I only
know one word of German, and that's French :
Pardong. Whenever I want to go anywhere, or
to obtain anything, I simply say ' Pardong.'' No
one can say me nay, for I shouldn't understand
their language. So I help myself."

Self-help is the first law of possession. If one
wants anything done one should always do it
oneself — it saves so much waste of time in
blaming others if things go wrong. Take what
you want, but take it gracefully — then apologise
for having it, but keep it all the same, and then
put a sentry over it. This has answered very
well in our colonial policy. But the reason why
England has kept her colonies is that she has

26

Our Betters

not only the genius of " give and take " ; she has
the yet greater genius of " take and give " — the
genius of a sympathetic understanding of aHen
races. Her tyranny is tempered by humanity.

A general disarmament is the ideal towards
which humanity is striving all over the world.
But pride and prejudice and greed are still mighty
forces, and it is only by the spread of the higher
education that the spiritual development of man-
kind can be ensured by the adoption of Christ's
doctrines, which, alas ! go to the wall in all Christian
countries at the bidding of expediency. Blood is
thicker than water, but gold is thicker than blood.
As Shakespeare is the most modern of writers, so
is Christ the most modern of Reformers ; indeed,
He is a little in advance of our time; His prin-
ciples are still taboo, and if uttered by a modern
statesman would be denounced as " bad form."
Is not every reformer regarded as " no gentleman "
until his propaganda has become the law of
the land ?

I knew a multi-millionaire who, having been
baptised late in life, forsook Christianity. We had
been having a somewhat heated discussion on
social questions. We were in a picture gallery,
and suddenly stood before a great picture of
Christ. " Socialist ! " the multi-millionaire cried

as he left the building.

27

Our Betters

But to whatever shade of political opinion we
may belong, we must all recognise the terrible
danger which lurks in the transference of power
from Kings to the People, for if the tyranny of
Kings and Priests be undesirable, the tyranny of
the half-educated mob is yet more terrible. Beware
of the tyranny of the great, but beware far more
of the chaos of ignorance. We are in a period of
transition, and out of the very danger of giving
power to the people may arise the universal peace.
As Science is teaching us the use of the newly
discovered forces of electricity and radium, which,
ignorantly used, are infernal agents of destruction,
so may the right use of democratic power be the
most splendid agency for good when the peoples
shall have been instructed in its right use. Thus
enlightened, the people may draw closer the bonds
of the Brotherhood of Man ; and, guided by the
new light and restrained by the higher education,
is it not possible that the workmen of the world
will join in a bloodless revolution and cry, " We
will have no more wars " ?

War is not the only business of man. There
are other heroisms than those of the sword and
the submarine. Who has not — if he have an
imagination to understand and a heart to feel
— who has not shuddered in reading of the
terrors of this latest war in the East ? Who has
not been filled with noble hatred of the wiles of

28

Our Betters

politicians, of the cupidity of potentates, and of
the stupidity of peoples ? In contemplating from
afar the terrible sufferings entailed by a single
campaign, whose gorge has not risen with indigna-
tion at the brutalities, the tortures, the agonies,
the rapine of which our brothers and sisters are
the victims, on those blood-soaked, pestilential
plains ?

We often hear it said that war is a necessary
evil, that war keeps the race strong, that war
will not cease while human nature lasts. But is
this so ? What about the Jews, who are perhaps
the most dominant race in the world to-day ?
Have they needed wars to keep them strong ?
Have their domestic virtues needed the stimulus
of bloodshed ? Have their acquisitive vices
needed it ? Has the flower of the Jewish race
been destroyed on the battlefield ? The Jews have
devoted themselves for many centuries to com-
merce and to the arts of peace. Certainly we
artists have reason to be grateful to the Jews ;
for I dread to think what would become of the
art of this country were it not for the encourage-
ment and support it receives at the hands of
the Jewish community.

We have looked upon the wonderful strides
which Science has made in the past fifty years —
it may be that in the next half-century mankind
will see a revolution which shall bring another

29

Our Betters

happiness, the happiness which is derived from
the exercise of the most humanising of all the
influences — I mean that which is bestowed by
Art.

Is it not possible that the gentle tapping at
the earth's crust may find an echo in the hearts
of the peoples of the earth, who will arise in the
might of a new-born religion and will knock at
the gates of the world's conscience, singing in
unison the hymn of humanity, and crying, "Thou
shalt do no murder — even for the divine right of
kings " ; when frontiers shall be swept away and
there shall be one brotherhood of man, one flag,
one language, and one religion, the religion of
Humanity ; when the people shall be generalled
by the dreamers, the poets, the philosophers,
the seers and singers, the artists of the world ?
It is men like Christ, Sophocles, Dante, Shake-
speare, Cervantes, and Goethe rather than
the heroic slaughterers of history who have
the abiding influence in the advancement of
mankind.

The sum of a man's greatness should be meas-
ured, not by his destructive activity, but by the
constructive good he does for the world. What is
his output of good ? That is the question. What
is the sum of Napoleon's achievement ? I am
inclined to think that his most useful contribution
to the happiness of mankind was the constitution

30

Our Betters

he gave to the Comedie Fran^aise in the Code
Napoleon.

Has not the highest morality been defined as
that which will bring the greatest happiness to
the greatest number ? And happiness depends
not on wealth, not on environing luxuries ; it is
rather a condition of mind ; it is the power to
enjoy. This gift is bestowed on one and the same
person with an almost equal proportion as is the
power to suffer. One child will be happy with
a rag doll ; another will be dissatisfied with
the most perfect mechanical toy — because it does
not have a real stomach-ache when it is pinched.
Contentment is the state of being that we should
cultivate, for it is cultivatablc ; it is irrigable with
the aid of humour. It is a habit of mind which is
due largely no doubt to a blessed heredity, but
is also capable of being acquired by training and
by careful fostering.

Happiness does not depend on possessions.
Imagination can do much. It is, of course, fine
to have good things to eat and drink ; but I had
for friend a gentle philosopher who told me that
when he was poor he was content with a piece of
bread and cheese and a glass of beer for dinner,
during which he would revel in the imaginative
delights of a cookery book ! The rich man has
not a monopoly of happiness. " Poor and content
is rich and rich enough ; but riches fineless is as

31

Our Betters

poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be
poor."

Goethe beautifully sums up this philosophy in
his poem of " The Eagle and the Dove." An eagle
is wounded, and with his broken wing he drags
along a miserable existence by the side of a brook,
on the other side of which is a dove, who in perfect
safety exchanges views on life with her carnivor-
ous vis-d-vis. The eagle complains of his lot. To
this the dove replies :

" ' Be of good cheer, my friend 1
All that is needed for calm happiness
Hast thou not here ?

Hast thou not pleasure in the golden bough
That shields thee from the day's fierce glow ?
Canst thou not raise thy breast to catch,
On the soft moss beside the brook.
The sun's last rays at even ?
Here thou mayst wander through the flowers' fresh

dew,
Pluck from the forest-trees
The choicest food — mayst quench
Thy light thirst at the silvery spring —
Oh, friend, true happiness
Lies in content.
And sweet content
Finds everywhere enough.'

' Oh, wise one I ' said the eagle, while he sank
In deep and ever deep'ning thought —
' Oh 1 wisdom 1 thou speakest like a dove.' "

I have no doubt that everything I have said

3^

Our Betters

has been better said by someone else. One of
the very few authors with whom I have a skip-
ping aequaintance is Emerson. In one of his essays
occurs the following passage :

" I know that for niysclf it makes no difference
whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned
excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege
where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my
gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my
assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary
testimony. What must I do is all that concerns me,
not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous
in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole
distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the
harder, because you will always find those who think
they know what is your duty better than you know it.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own ; but the
great nuin is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps
with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

That indeed is a great capacity — to keep the
aloofness of one's soul through all the sordid-
ness of life, amid the hustle and bustle, the bang
and clang, the game and the fame, the jobbery
and snobbery, of everyday existence ; to retain,
in fact, the mind of a child, and so keep the
illusions of fairyland, even after our fairyland has
faded as a mirage of childhood.

Yes ; to keep one's illusions, to keep with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude,
D 33

Our Betters

that is a great achievement ; for our respect for
others is in proportion to our respect for our-
selves— and to be true to himself, that is man's
best endeavour ; for, as Shakespeare says (and
he says everything that can be said on any con-
ceivable subject better than any other could say
it), " To thine own self be true, and it must
follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then
be false to any man."

AFTERTHOUGHT

If in the foregoing excursions I have given
utterance to an occasional truth, as the blind hen
picks up a corn, I can only plead that they were
"written when wandering alone under the pine-trees,
pondering some problems of life ; and the scent of
the pine-trees had got into my brain. I listened
to what they said, and took it down in shorthand.
And the message that their boughs whispered to
me was this :

The best thing a man can do is to be himself
in spite of all inconveniences; and in his little
walk through life to tell the truth according to
himself; to be afraid of no man but himself;

34

Our Betters

to respect the laws but not to cringe to them ; to
he himself in spite of the opinion of the multi-
tude, and to acknowledge no higher Court of
Appeal than that of his own conscience ; for he
who can look unflinchingly in the mirror of his
soul laughs when his effigy is burnt in the market
place.

" Is that so?'' I asked.

And the pine-trees murmured, " Yes, our only
Betters are Ourselves.'"

A^

THE LIVING SHAKESPEARE

A DEFENCE OF MODERN TASTE

THE LIVING SHAKESPEARE

ABUSE of the public is the last ditch of the
■^ ^^ disappointed.

" Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " I have not even
mentioned ' little Davy ' in the preface to my
Shakespeare."

" Why ? " ventured Boswcll. " Do you not
admire that great actor ? "

" Yes," replied the Doctor, " as a poor player
who frets and struts his hour upon the stage — as
a shadow."

" But," persisted Boswell, " has he not brought
Shakespeare into notice ? "

At this the immortal lexicographer fired up.
" Sir, to allow that would be to lampoon the age.

39

The Living Shakespeare

Many of Shakespeare's plays are the worse for
bemg acted."

Then Boswell, Scotsman that he was, once
more rcpHed with a question : " What ! is nothing
gained by acting and decoration ? "

" Sir ! " rephed Dr. Johnson, breathing hard ;
" Sir ! " he thundered, as he brought down his
fist with all the energy of his rotund and volcanic
personality ; " Sir ! " — and for once there was a
silence — the only silence that is recorded in the
life of that great positivist.

In that brief conversation is raised the chief
question which has divided lovers of Shakespeare
for three centuries past. Ought his works to be
presented upon the stage at all ?

Strange as it may seem in an actor, I am bound
to say that I can understand this attitude of mind,
which was shared by many thinkers of past ages.
I am not astonished even that such acute and
genial critics as Charles Lamb and Wordsworth,
that such serious lovers of Shakespeare as Hazlitt
and Emerson, held the opinion that the works of
our greatest dramatist should not be seen upon the
stage. Be that as it may, it is not my intention
to enter into an academic discussion with these
departed spirits. Rather will it be my practical
endeavour to show that the public of to-day
demands that, if acted at all, Shakespeare shall

40

The Living Shakespeare

be presented with all the resources of the theatre
of our time — that he shall be treated, not as a
dead author speaking a dead language, but as
a living foree speaking with the voiee of a living
humanity. And it will be my further endeavour
to show that in making this demand the publie is
right.

I am quite aware that in this assertion I am
opposed by those who regard Shakespeare as a
mere literary legaey, and themselves as his exe-
cutors, for whose special behest his bones are
periodically exhumed in order to gratify a pretty
taste for literary pedantry. But great poetry is
not written for the Few, elected of themselves ;
it must be a living force, or it must be respect-
fully relegated to the dingy shelves of the great
unheard — the little read.

Is Shakespeare living, or is he dead ? That is
the question. Is he to be, or not to be ?

If he is to be, his being must be of our time —
that is to say, we must look at him with the eyes
and we must listen to him with the ears of our
own generation. And it is surely the greatest
tribute to his genius that we should claim his
work as belonging no less to our time than to
his own !

There are those who contend that, if Shake-
speare be fit to play to our age, in order to

41

The Living Shakespeare

appreciate his works they must only be decked out
with the threadbare wardrobe of a bygone time.
Let us treat these antiquarians with the respect
due to another age, but do not let us be deluded
by a too diligent study of magazine articles into
the belief that we must regard these great plays
as interesting specimens for the special delectation
of epicures in antiques.

We have, then, in fact, two contending forces
of opinion : on the one side we have the literary
experts, as revealed in print ; on the other we
have public opinion, as revealed by the coin of
the realm.

Before I enter upon my justification of the
public taste, I shall have to show what the public
taste is. Now, there is only one way of arriving
at an estimate of the public taste in " things
theatric," and that is through the practical experi-
ence of those whose business it is to cater for the
public. The few experts who arrogate to them-
selves the right to dictate what the public taste
should be are exactly those who ignore what it
really is. To their more alluring speculations I
shall turn later on ; and if, in passing over
the ground which has been trodden by these
erudite but uninformed writers, I have now
and then to sweep aside the cobwebs woven
of their fancy, I shall hope to do so with a
light hand, serene in the assurance that good

42

The Living Shakespeare

and strenuous work will survive the condemnation
of a footnote.

Much has been written of late as to the manner
in which the plays of Shakespeare should be pre-
sented. We are told in this connection that the
ideal note to strike is that of " Adequacy." We
are assured that we are not to apply to Shake-
spearian productions the same care, the same
reverence for accuracy, the same regard for stage
illusion, for mounting, scenery, and costume,
which we devote to authors of lesser degree ; that
we should not, in fact, avail ourselves of those
adjuncts which in these days science and art place
at the manager's right hand ; in other words, that
we are to produce our national poet's works with-
out the crowds and armies, without the pride,
pomp, and circumstance which are suggested in
every page of the dramatist's work, and the absence
of which Shakespeare himself so frequently laments
in his plays. On this subject — rightly or wrongly
— (but I hope I shall be able to prove to you
rightly) the public has spoken with no hesitating
voice ; the trend of its taste has undoubtedly
been towards putting Shakespeare upon the stage
as worthily and as munificently as the manager
can afford.

It would be interesting to ascertain how many
English playgoers have encouraged this method
of producing Shakespeare since Sir Squire Bancroft

43

The Living Shakespeare

gave us The Merchant of Venice at the old
Prince of Wales' Theatre, which is my earliest
theatrical recollection of the kind ; and I do not
remember since to have seen any Shakespearian
presentation more satisfying to my judgment. It
was here that Ellen Terry first shed the sunlight
of her buoyant and radiant personality on the
character of Portia ; it was the first production in
which the modern spirit of stage-management
asserted itself, transporting us as it did into the
atmosphere of Venice, into the rarefied realms of
Shakespearian comedy. Since then, no doubt,
millions have flocked to this class of production,
as we realise when we recall Sir Henry Irving's
beautiful Shakespearian presentations from 1874
to 1896 ; presentations which included Hamlet,
Macbeth, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, King
Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice,
Henry VIII., Richard III., and Cymbeline ; and
when we remember Miss Mary Anderson's memor-
able production of A Winter's Tale at the same
theatre, where the Leontes was Mr. Forbes Robert-
son, another actor of the modern school (that old
school which is eternally new — I might say the right
school), not to mention Mr. John Hare's As You
Like It, Mr. Wilson Barrett's Hamlet and Othello,
and Mr. George Alexander's As You Like It and
Much Ado About Nothing. Again, at the Hay-
market, under a recent management, one might

44

The Living Shakespeare

have seen produced in this same culpable fashion
Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and
Henry IV.

Now, I am not in a position, by means of the
brutal but unanswerable logic of figures, to speak
of the success which attended the various pro-
ductions of my brother managers : nor shall
I seek to set up commercial success as the
standard by which artistic endeavour must be
gauged. But I do know that, by the public
favour, many of the managers whom I have men-
tioned succeeded in keeping in the bills for a
number of months their great Shakespearian pro-
ductions, and I believe that in the aggregate these
brought them ample and substantial reward.
That we should look for that sluttishness of pros-
perity which attends entertainments of another
order is, of course, out of the question ; but the
privilege of presenting the masterpieces of Shake-
speare's genius is surely as great as that derived
from paying a dividend of 35 per cent, to a set of
shareholders in a limited liability company. But
if I am unable to speak with authority as to the
success or otherwise which has attended the pro-
ductions at other theatres, I can speak with
authority in reference to those productions for
which I myself have been responsible — if, indeed,
it be permissible to call oneself as a witness to
prove one's own case. For the moment modesty

45

The Living Shakespeare

must give way to the exigencies of the situation —
as modesty frequently must.

In three years at Her Majesty's Theatre three
Shakespearian productions have been given —
Julius Ccesar, King John, and A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream ; and much, no doubt, as it will
shock some people, I am not ashamed to say that
for these productions I have tried to borrow from
the arts and the sciences all that the arts and the
sciences had to lend. And what has been the
result ? In London alone two hundred and forty-
two thousand people witnessed Julius Ccesar, over
one hundred and seventy thousand came to see
King John, and nearly two hundred and twenty
thousand were present during the run of A Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream — in all a grand total of
six hundred and thirty-two thousand visitors to
these three productions. And no doubt my brother
managers who have catered for the public in this
manner could, with the great successes that they
have had, point to similar figures. I think, there-
fore, it is not too much to claim that the public
taste clearly and undoubtedly — whether that taste
be good or bad — lies in the direction of the method
in which Shakespeare has been presented of late
years by the chief metropolitan managers. It is
for me to prove that that taste is justified, and
that the great mass of English theatre-goers are
not to be stamped as fools and ignorants because

46

The Living Shakespeare

they have shown a decided preferenee for con-
temporary methods.

I have endeavoured to show what the public
taste of to-day is. Before entering upon its
defence, I shall put before you the case for the
prosecution. Many able pens have been busy of
late, and much valuable ink has been spilt in
assuring us that the modern method is a wrong
method, and that Shakespeare can only be rescued
from the sloth into which he has fallen by a return
to that primitive treatment which may be indi-
cated in such stage instructions as " This is a
forest," "This is a wall," "This is a youth,"
" This is a maiden," " This is a moon."

The first count in the indictment, according to
one distinguished writer, is that it is the modern
manager's " avowed intention to appeal to the
spectator mainly through the eye." If that be so,
then the manager is clearly at fault — but I am
unacquainted with that manager. We are told
that the manager nowadays will only produce
those plays of Shakespeare which lend themselves
to " ostentatious spectacle." If that be so, then
the manager is clearly at fault — but I am still
vmacquainted with him. We are assured on the
authority of this same writer, who I am sure would
be incapable of deliberately arguing from false
premisses, that " in the most influential circles of

The Living Shakespeare

the theatrical profession it has become a common-
place to assert that Shakespearian drama cannot
be successfully produced on the stage — cannot be
rendered tolerable to any large section of the
play-going public — without a plethora of scenic
spectacle and gorgeous costumes which the student
regards as superfluous and inappropriate." If it
be so, the unknown manager is once more at fault.
We may, indeed, take him to be a vulgar rogue who
produces Shakespeare for the sole purpose of gain,
and who does not hesitate to debauch the public
taste in order to compass his sordid ends.

We are told that under the present system it
is no longer possible for Shakespeare's plays to be
acted constantly and in their variety owing to
the large sums of money which have to be expended,
thus necessitating long runs. Of course, if a large
number of Shakespeare's plays could follow each
other without intermission, a very desirable state
of things would be attained ; but my contention
is that no company of ordinary dimensions could
possibly achieve this, either worthily or even
satisfactorily. Leaving out of consideration for
the moment all such questions as rehearsals of
scenery and effects, it is impossible for one set
of actors properly to prepare one play in the space
of a few days while they are playing another at
night. Those who have had any experience of
rehearsing a Shakespearian drama in a serious way

48

The Living Shakespeare

will bear me out that a week or a fortnight, or
even a month, is insuflicient to do the text any-
thing like full justice. And even when attempts
of this kind have been made, can it honestly be
said that they have left any lasting impression
upon the mind or the fancy ? I contend that
greater service for the true knowing of Shake-
speare's works is rendered by the careful pro-
duction of one of these plays than by the indifferent
— or, as I believe it is now fashionably called, the
" adequate " — representation of half a dozen of
them. By deeply impressing an audience, and
making their hearts throb to the beat of the poet's
wand, by bringing out through representation the
full meaning of his works, by enthralling an
audience by the magic of the actor who has the
compelling power, we are enabled to give Shake-
speare a wider appeal and a larger franchise —
surely no mean achievement ! Thousands witness
him instead of hundreds ; for his works are not
only, or primarily, for the literary student : they
are for the world at large. Indeed, there should
be more joy over ninety-nine Philistines that are
gained than over one elect that is preserved. I
contend that not only is no service rendered to
Shakespeare by an " adequate " representation,
but that such performances arc a disservice, in so
far that a large proportion of the audience will
receive from such representations an impression of
E 49

The Living Shakespeare

dullness. And in all modesty it may be claimed
that it is better to draw multitudes by doing
Shakespeare in the way the public prefers than
to keep the theatre empty by only presenting him
" adequately," as these counsels of imperfection
would have us do.

Our detractors miss two basic points. There
is no proof that Shakespeare did not run a
new play as long as it held the town — everything
points to the contrary. And if Shakespeare " ade-
quate " appealed to the public more than Shake-
speare splendid, we who produce him would find it
to our immense advantage and profit so to do.

I take it that the proper function of putting
Shakespeare upon the stage is not only to provide
an evening's amusement at the theatre, but also
to give a stimulus to the further study of our
great poet's works. If performances, therefore,
make but a fleeting impression during the moments
that they are in action, and are forgotten as soon
as the playhouse is quitted, the stimulus for diving
deeper into other plays than those that we have
witnessed must inevitably be wanting. For my
own part, I admit that the long run has its dis-
advantages— that it tends (unless fought against)
to automatic acting and to a lessening of enthu-
siasm, passion, and imagination on the part of
the actor ; but what system is perfect ? It is a
regrettable fact that in all the affairs of life, when-

The Living Shakespeare

ever we strive for an abstract condition of things,
we are apt to come into collision with the concrete
wall which is built of human limitations — as many
an idealist's battered head will testify. In making
a choice, one can only elect that system which has
the smallest number of drawbacks to its account.

The argument that the liabilities involved
nowadays in producing a Shakespearian play on
the modern system are so heavy that few managers
care to face them, and that therefore, unless a
change in such system take place, Shakespeare
will be banished from the London stage altogether
— is in my opinion a fallacious one. Again I
apologise for intruding the results of my own
experience, but I feel bound to state — if only for
the purpose of encouraging others to put Shake-
speare on the stage as bountifully as they can
afford — that no single one of my Shakespearian
productions has been unattended by a substantial
pecuniary reward.

I now come to deal with two charges which
practically come under one head — the impeach-
ment of the actor-manager. He is represented as
being capable of every enormity, of every shame-
less infraction of every rule of dramatic art, pro-
vided only that he stands out from his fellows
and obtains the giant share of notice and applause.
These two charges are : first, that the text is

51

The Living Shakespeare

ruthlessly cut in order to give an unwarranted
predominance to certain parts ; and secondly,
that the parts are not entrusted to actors capable
of doing them justice. If these charges be true,
the practice is a most reprehensible one. But are
they true ? Is it not rather the fact that the old
star system has of late given way to all-round casts
of a high level ? I think the public taste and the
practice of managers has been in this direction —
a welcome change which has taken place during
recent years. In regard to this cutting of the
text, it is only fair to point out that the process
to an extent is necessary in the present day. It
would be impossible otherwise to bring most of
Shakespeare's plays within the three-hours' limit
which he himself has described as the proper
traffic of the stage. In times gone by when there
was practically no scenery at all, when the public
were satisfied to come to the playhouse and remain
in their seats without moving from the beginning
to the end of the performance (taking solid and
liquid refreshment when it pleased them), a much
lengthier play was possible than in these days ;
but to perform any single one of Shakespeare's
plays without excision at all would be to court
failure instead of success. To play, for example,
the whole of Hamlet or Antony and Cleopatra — the
two longest of Shakespeare's works — without a
cut would mean a stay of about five hours in the

52

The Living Shakespeare

theatre. This would never be tolerated in these
days, and the result of sueh a practice would be
to empty the theatre instead of to fill it. Modern
conditions of life obviously do not admit of sueh
a system. Dinner is so necessary — nowadays !
Moreover, Shakespeare himself did not represent
the entire play of Hamlet, which was subjected to
judicious cuts in his own time — and there is
nothing to show that his dramas were ever per-
formed in their printed entirety. Take, for example,
Antony and Cleopatra. We have no evidence that
it was ever })layed in Shakespeare's own time ; but,
if it were, the loose construction of Act III., involv-
ing as it does the necessity of no fewer than eleven
changes of scene, could hardly have fulfilled the
ideal dramatic requirements even of those days.

Now as to the constitution of the Shakespearian
casts of the present day, it is asserted that the
parts are not entrusted to the right exponents.
With all respect, I submit that the public has the
right to choose its own favourites, and surely the
manager has the right to select his own company
from the ranks of these favourites, rather than
from the ranks of those whose practice, however
useful, has been limited to the range of Shake-
spearian drama, and who have not yet gained their
spurs in the wider field of our arduous calling ;
for the more varied his experience, the better
equipped is the actor for the presentation of the

53

The Living Shakespeare

essentially human characters of Shakespeare. If
we follow the argument to the end, we are led to
the conclusion that it is more satisfying to see
the young lady who has but three years been
emancipated from the high school, playing Ophelia
and Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Viola and Rosalind,
than Miss Ellen Terry, Miss Mary Anderson, Miss
Julia Neilson, and other actresses of their proved
talents and experience. I venture to think that
the public is once more right. What is this
clamour about the modern cast ? Not to cite
more modern instances, let us take the cast of
Henry VIII. at the Lyceum. Henry Irving as
Wolsey, William Terriss as the King, Arthur
Stirling as Cranmer, Forbes Robertson as Bucking-
ham, Alfred Bishop as the Chamberlain, Ellen
Terry as Queen Katharine, Mrs. Arthur Bourchier
as Anne Boleyn, and Miss Le Thiere as the Old
Dame. How should we better this ?

That the chief parts in most Shakespearian
productions are given to star artists is not only
the fault of the manager — the chief culprit was
himself an author-actor-manager. He wrote great
parts, and great parts require great actors. Shake-
speare and Adequacy ! What a combination !
Adequacy ! The word seems to me almost blas-
phemous in such a connection. For all the ills
to which dramatic flesh is heir the actor-manager
is held responsible : he is the evil genius of the

54

The Living Shakespeare

theatre ; a make-up of vanity, ignorance, and
despotism ; a kind of Bottom the Weaver without
his wit. I can picture him, having condescended
to give up an hour or two of his leisured Hfe to the
careless pastime of a rehearsal, standing in the
centre of the stage, clad in costly furs, holding in
one hand an edition de luxe of Shakespeare (without
notes), wielding in the other a tyrannical sceptre
in the shape of a blue pencil, while by flashes of
limelight he mutilates, with a fiendish, almost
ghoulish, joy on his face, all that portion of the
text which he cannot with any show of ingenuity
commandeer to his own part. I can see him waving
a recently manicured hand, flashing with precious
gems, in lofty deprecation of honest merit gibber-
ing in a corner. I can imagine him, leaving the
half-fmished rehearsal, bent on some errand of
gluttony, and oozing through the stage door, the
decadent odour of his scented curls hitting the
nostrils of the virtuous commentator to whose
muttered footnote he turns a deaf ear ; I can see
him carelessly fling a handful of superfluous gold
to a group of satellites who raise a hireling cheer
as he leaps into his triumphal auto-motor car,
wherein, juggernauting with the relentless revolu-
tions of its gilded wheels, the prostrate figures of
Literature, Art, and Science, he is puffed away to
his lordly mansion in Grosvenor Square. But
away with him !

55

The Living Shakespeare

The last of the attacks upon the modern
method of mounting Shakespeare with which I
propose to deal is the accusation that under the
present system scenic embellishment is not simple
and inexpensive or subordinate to the dramatic
interest. To this I say that, worthily to represent
Shakespeare, the scenic embellishment should be
as beautiful and costly as the subject of the drama
being performed seems to demand ; that it should
not be subordinate to, but rather harmonious with,
the dramatic interest, just as every other element
of art introduced into the representation should
be — whether those arts be of acting, painting,
sculpture, music, or what not. The man who in
his dramatic genius has made the nearest approach
to Shakespeare is probably Wagner. Did Wagner
regard his work as independent of the aids which
his time gave him to complete the illusion of the
spectator ? No ; he availed himself of all the
effects with which modern art could help him, no
doubt saying to himself, as Moliere said, " Je
prends mon bien ou je le trouve." All these he
enslaved in the service of the theatre. Wagner's
works are primarily dramas heightened by the aid
of music, of scenery, of atmosphere, of costumes,
all gorgeous or simple as the situation requires.
Stripped of these aids, would Wagner have the
deep effect on audiences such as we have witnessed
at Bayreuth ? No ! Every man should avail

56

The Living Shakespeare

himself of the aids which his generation affords
him. It is only the weakling who harks back
echoically to the methods of a bygone generation.
That painter is surely greater who sees nature —
human and otherwise — with the clear eyes of his
own time rather than through the blurred spec-
tacles of a bygone age. Indeed, no man is great in
any walk of life unless he is, in the best sense, of
his time. A good workman does not quarrel with
the tools his generation has given him, any more
than a good general will reject the weapons of
modern warfare on the score that muzzle-loaders
were " good enough " for his forefathers.

Having noticed what there is to be said against
the modern stage, let us now see what the modern
stage has to say for itself. I take it that the
entire business of the stage is — Illusion. As the
entire aim of all art is Illusion, to gain this
end all means are fair. The same is sometimes
said of love and war, though I incline to dismiss
this declaration as an ethical fallacy. Illusion,
then, is the first and last word of the stage ; all
that aids illusion is good, all that destroys illusion
is bad. This simple law governs us — or should
govern us. In that compound of all the arts which
is the art of the modern theatre, the sweet grace
of restraint is of course necessary, and the scenic
embellishments should not overwhelm the dramatic

57

The Living Shakespeare

interest, or the balance is upset — the ilkision is
gone ! This nice balance depends upon the tact
of the presiding artist, and often the greatest
illusion will be attained by the simplest means.
For instance, a race run off the stage and witnessed
by an excited and interested crowd of actors will
probably be more effective than one devised of
cardboard horses jerking to the winning-post in
the face of the audience. Is illusion destroyed by
getting as near as we can to a picture of the real
thing ? Supposing that in the course of a play a
scene is placed " Before a castle," and a reference
is made in the dialogue to the presence of the
castle, would it be disturbing to an audience's
imagination to see that castle painted on the
cloth ? If it did so disturb an audience, then the
castle would be out of place. That is to say, if
the audience turned to one another and whispered.,
" That is a castle — how extraordinary ! " that
would be breaking the illusion. Even more dis-
turbing, however, would it be for the audience to
turn to one another and to whisper, " But there
ain't no castle ! " It is quite conceivable that in
former times a finely painted scene would have
distracted the attention of the audience, because
it was unexpected — but now appropriate
illustration is the normal condition of the
theatre.

I have said that I could understand such writers

S8

The Living Shakespeare

as Hazlitt, Lamb, and Emerson declaring that
they preferred that Shakespeare should not be
presented on the stage at all, for there is undoubt-
edly a tendency in performances other than those
of the first order to destroy the illusion of the
highly cultured ; and I can conceive that such a
one would say to himself, " Why undergo the
unnecessary discomfort and expense of a visit to
the theatre when I can read my Shakespeare at
ease in my arm-chair ? "

I can realise that a satisfactory result may be
obtained by a number of ladies and gentlemen, in
ordinary attire, playing before a green baize cur-
tain and reciting the verse without recourse to
stage appointments of any kind ; for the imagina-
tion would not be offended by inappropriate acces-
sories. But I cannot admit a compromise between
this primitive form of dramatic representation and
that which obtains to-day. It must be a frank
convention or an attempt at complete illusion.
To illustrate this, suppose we have a scene which
takes place in Athens ; it would be better to have
no scene at all than a view of the Marylebone
Road.

But possibly the best means of justifying the
modern method of putting Shakespeare upon the
stage, and the public's liking of that method, is to
demonstrate that in principle at least it departs
in no way from the manner in which the dramatist

59

The Living Shakespeare

himself indicated that his works should be pre-
sented. Let us call Shakespeare himself as a
witness on this issue, and show that he not only
foresaw, but desired, the system of production
that is now most in the public favour. Surely no
complaint can be raised against those who seek,
in putting an author's work upon the stage, to
carry out the author's wishes in the matter; and
it is better to follow those directions than to listen
to the critics of three hundred years later, who
clamour for a system exactly opposite to the one
which the author distinctly advocated. In spite
of what has been said to the contrary, I adhere
to my reading of the prelude to Henry V., and
contend that in those most beautiful lines Shake-
speare regretted the deficiencies of the stage of
his day, for it is reasonable to suppose that in
writing those lines he did not mean the opposite of
what he said, as we are ingeniously told he did.
Here it will be seen what store Shakespeare sets
on illusion for the theatre, and how he implores
the spectator to supply by means of his imagina-
tion the deficiencies of the stage. It is, of course,
impossible on the stage to hold in numbers " the
vasty fields of France " — but it is not impossible
to suggest those " vasty fields." Can it be reason-
ably argued that, because in these lines he prays
his auditors to employ the powers of their imagina-
tion, therefore we in these days are to be debarred

60

The Living Shakespeare

from helping that imagination with the means at
hand ? But if we would get a really just view of
Shakespeare's notions of how his dialogue and
action were to be theatrically assisted, we need
do nothing else than turn to the stage directions
of his plays. To take three examples, I would
beg you carefully to read the stage instructions
in The Tempest, Henry VIII., and Pericles, and
ask yourselves why, if Shakespeare contemplated
nothing in the way of what we term a pro-
duction, he gave such minute direction for effects
which even in our time of artistic and scientific
mounting are difficult of realisation. Surely no
one reading the vision of Katharine of Aragon can
come to any other conclusion than that Shake-
speare intended to leave as little to the imagination
as possible, and to put upon the stage as gorgeous
and as complete a picture as the resources of the
theatre could supply !

And are we not inclined to undervalue a little
the stage resources of the Elizabethan period ?
And are we not prone to assume that Shakespeare
had far less in this direction to his hand than the
scant limits for which we give him credit ? Of
scenery in the public theatres there was practically
none, but in the private houses and in the castles
of the nobles, when plays were played at the cele-
bration of births and marriages and comintfs-of-
age, we find that mounting, scenery, costume, and

6i

The Living Shakespeare

music were largely employed as adjuncts to these
performances. In fact, when we read the descrip-
tion of some of the masques and interludes, when
we consider the gorgeousness of display and the
money that was expended for only single per-
formances, we may well doubt whether even in
our day we have surpassed what our forefathers
of three centuries ago attained. So that in justify-
ing the lavishness of modern productions we are
not altogether thrown back upon the theory of
Shakespeare's " prophetic vision " of what the
stage would compass when he had been laid in
his grave. These shows were undoubtedly wit-
nessed by Shakespeare himself, and it is indeed
not unreasonable to suppose that he acquired the
love of gorgeous stage decorations from such per-
formances witnessed by him in early life.

Take the question of what we call " properties."
Shakespeare more than any other author seems to
demand these at every turn. Swords, helmets,
doublets, rings, and bracelets, and caskets and
crowns are the inevitable paraphernalia of the
Shakespearian drama ; while as to music, the exist-
ence of an orchestra is vouched for by the recent
discovery by a German savant of a contemporary
drawing of the interior of the old Swan Theatre.
This drawing is reproduced in Mr. Sidney Lee's
remarkable " Life of Shakespeare," and proves
conclusively that instrumentalists were employed

62

The Living Shakespeare

to heighten the effect of the spoken words, as
indeed Shakespeare's stage instructions continually
indicate they should. When we come to the
question of costumes, the case is even stronger.
The burning of the Globe Theatre — an event, by
the way, due to the realism of Shakespeare's stage
management — robbed us of many important
documents, but in the inventory still in existence
of the costume wardrobe of a London theatre in
Shakespeare's time (" Henslowe's Diary ") there
are mentioned particular costumes for cardinals,
shepherds, kings, clowns, friars, and fools ; green
coats for Robin Hood's men, and a green gown
for Maid Marian ; a white and gold doublet for
Henry V., and a robe for Longshanks, besides sur-
plices, copes, damask frocks, gowns of cloth of
gold and of cloth of silver, taffeta gowns, calico
gowns, velvet coats, satin coats, frieze coats,
jerkins of yellow leather and of black leather, red
suits, grey suits, French pierrot suits, a robe " for
to go invisibell " and four farthingales. There
are also entries of Spanish, Moorish, and Danish
costumes, of helmets, lances, painted shields,
imperial crowns and papal tiaras, as well as of
costumes for Turkish janissaries, Roman senators,
and all the gods and goddesses of High Olympus !
No dramatist of the French, English, or
Athenian stage relies as Shakespeare does for his
effects on the dress of his actors ; he not only

63

The Living Shakespeare

appreciated the value of costume in adding pic-
turesqueness to poetry, but he saw how important
it is as a means for producing certain dramatic
results. Many of his plays, such as Measure for
Measure, Twelfth Night, the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, AlVs Well that Ends Well, Cymheline,
The Merchant of Venice, and others, depend
entirely on the character of the various dresses
worn by the hero and heroine, and, unless these
dresses be accurate, the author's effect will be lost.
Nor are the examples of the employment of cos-
tume as a means of intensifying dramatic situations
less numerous. Macbeth in his nightgown, Timon
in rags, Richard flattering the citizens of London
in mean and shabby armour and afterwards march-
ing through the town in Crown and George and
Garter, Prospero throwing off his magician's robe
and calling for hat and rapier, and the very Ghost
in Hamlet changing his mystical attire to produce
different effects, are all examples of this. Nobody
from the mere details of apparel has drawn such
irony of situation — such immediate and tragic
effect — such pity and pathos — as has Shakespeare
himself. Armed cap-d-pie, the dead King stalks
on the battlements of Elsinore because all is not
well with Denmark. Shylock's gabardine is part
of the reproach under which he writhes, and
Orlando's blood-stained napkin strikes the first
sombre note in As You Like It. Whatever was

64

The Living Shakespeare

the case then, there is no reason that we should
conthiue in imperfections which may be supposed
to characterise Shakespeare's stage mounting. I
have endeavoured to call Shakespeare as a witness
for the justification of the public taste through
the means of his printed words ; we have, as it
were, taken his evidence on commission ; and I
would have you read the delightful scene in the
last act of A Midsummer NighVs Dream, which is
itself the most tinglingly satirical skit on the
primitive methods of the stage — the ruthless ex-
position of which shows how Shakespeare himself,
in this humorous lament of Adequacy, stood forth
as the staunch advocate of a wider stage art. If we
are to mount his plays in the manner of his time,
we may go farther and hold that because in Shake-
speare's day women's parts were represented by
boys, actresses should be driven from the theatre.
It is true that the practice is still in vogue in
pantomime, except when the order is reversed and
the leading lady is the " principal boy " ; but I
question whether the severest sticklers for the
methods of Elizabethan days would advocate that
Ophelia should be represented by Mr, Wilson
Barrett and Desdcmona by Mr. Benson.

Accuracy of detail, for the sake of perfect
illusion, is necessary for us. What we have to
see is that the details are not allowed to over-
shadow the principal theme, and this they never
F 6s

The Living Shakespeare

can do while they arc carefully and reasonably
introduced. As Victor Hugo says, " the smallest
details of history and domestic life should be
minutely studied and reproduced by the manager,
but only as a means to increase the reality (not
the realism) of the whole work, and to drive
into the obscurest corners of a play an atmosphere
of the general and pulsating life in the midst of
which the characters are truest and the catastrophes
consequently the most poignant."

The art of the theatre is of comparatively
modern birth — it has become more widely appeal-
ing, because it has embraced within its radius
many arts and many sciences, and because, through
their aids, it epitomises for us, in an appealing and
attractive form, the thoughts, the aspirations, the
humours and the passions of humanity, as expressed
by the dramatist. Campbell wrote it in his fare-
well stanzas to John Philip Kemble deftly enough :

" His was the spell o'er hearts
"Wliich only acting lends —
The youngest of the sister Arts
Where all their beauty blends.
For ill can poetry express
Full many a tone or thought sublime,
And Painting mute and motionless
Steals but a glance of time.
But by the mighty actor brought
Illusion's perfect triumphs come,
Verses cease to be airy thought
And Sculpture to be dumb."

66

The Living Shakespeare

There is another point of view of this question
which I would fain touch upon before I shuffle off
the coil of this paper — and that is the point of
view of the artist himself. He works not only for
the public, he works, and I think should work,
primarily for himself. To satisfy his own artistic
conscience should be his first aim — and this is
what the public, unconsciously perhaps, appre-
ciates and respects. Now, whatever may be said
as to pandering to the public taste, I maintain
that the artist himself would not remain satisfied
with tawdry productions. Even were the public
indifferent on this point (which happily it is not),
it should still be the actor's best endeavour to
aim at the highest that is within his reach and
to exhaust the resources which his generation has
given him. It is, I maintain, a fallacy to say that
the manager merely follows the public taste ; by
giving a supply of his best he often creates a
demand for what is good, and it is largely his
initiative — the stimulus which his individual enthu-
siasm and imagination give to the production of
great works — which preserves for those works the
recognition and support of the public which follows
him. Perhaps the ideal of the artist is not always
understanded of the public, but unless he keep
his ideal high, be sure the public will not regard
him. If he descend below the level of public
taste, the public will not take the trouble to ascend

67

The Living Shakespeare

to his at his call. I do not claim that in this he is
necessarily guided by a self-conscious code of
ethics — ^it is oftenest his ambition that impels him
to the highest work of which he is capable. He
cannot, in fact, be merely adequate. And who are
the trustees of the Stage's good ? Despite the
dicta of literary coteries, I maintain that the only
men who have ever done anything for the advance-
ment of the higher forms of the drama, the only
men who have made any sacrifice to preserve a
love of Shakespeare among the people, the only
men who have held high the banner of the play-
house, on which the name of Shakespeare is in-
scribed, are the actors themselves.

These thoughts were passing through my
mind one night, when the curtain had fallen
for the last time on Fairyland — when the lights
of Fairyland had one by one flickered out, and the
fairies had gone home to bed. I was pacing the
darkened stage, taking a final farewell of the scene
of our happy revels, when, by the magic of imagin-
ation, perhaps the touch of Titania's wand, the
empty stage was filled with another fairyland —
the fairyland of the Elysian Fields — an unfamiliar
scene, peopled with vaguely familiar forms. There,
clad in his habit as he lived, was a spare figure, the
domed arch of whose brow and whose serene smile
reminded me strangely of a bust I had once seen

68

The Living Shakespeare

in a Warwickshire church. I noticed that round
his neck he wore an EHzabethan ruff. There, too,
was a Httlc man in powdered wig and floweied
dressing-gown reciting now and then snatches of
blank verse which awakened the echoes of my
memory, and who was occasionally addressed as
" Davy." The third was a portly and portentous
figure, clad in a snuff-coloured square-cut coat,
and wearing an ample wig. " Sir ! " said the
strangely robed and material looking spirit, " in
Heaven's name what think you of the way they
are presenting your plays on earth ? " The poet
only smiled. " Sir ! " the other persisted, " as a
commentator I protest. It seems to me to lam-
poon antiquity that works of literary merit such as
yours undoubtedly possess should be decked out
for the delectation of a new-fangled posterity with
the vulgar aids of scenic embellishment and with
prodigious and impertinent supererogation." Then
he of the ruff spoke with a serene tolerance, some-
thing to this effect :

I care not how 'tis done, so 'tis well done.
My world is not for pedagogues alone —
What is that passage, Davy, from King Hal,
Where Chorus speaks my thoughts anent the stage,
Its narrow limits and its endless aims ?

Then he of the flowered dressins-ffown raised
his voice ;

69

((

The Living Shakespeare

O for a muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene 1

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself.

Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and

fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all.
The flat unraised spirits that have dar'd
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object ; can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France ? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt ?
O, pardon 1 Since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million ;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work. ^

Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts,
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder ;
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts ;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.

• • • • •

And so our scene must to the battle fly ;
Where — oh, for pity ! we shall much disgrace
With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous
The name of Agincourt."

" But, sir," persisted the rotund speaker, " is
a poor player, whose title to a place among the

70

The Living Shakespeare

arts I, as a literary autliority dispute, to be per-
mitted to put the stamp of his time on the Htera-
ture of past centuries, and through the public of
his hour to desecrate antiquity ? "

" Fudge ! " said the immortal poet, dropping
into prose. " Dost thou recall, Davy, that passage
in the Danish play in which I speak of the stage
and its place in the civilisation of the world ? "

Then the little man with the powdered wig
loomed large as with pride he spoke of the purpose
of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to
nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her
own image, and the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure.

" Sir ! " said the shadow of the learned man —
" Sir ! " and the vision began to fade — " Sir ! " it
faltered — and silence fell again.

AFTER-THOUGHT

Much that was written in tJw foregoing essay
remains true to-day. The new school of twelve
years ago has become the old school of to-day. We
have learned that Jaeger is not the only xvear — the

71

The Living Shakespeare

drab drama has already faded into dusky twilight.
The day after to-morrow so soon becomes ilie day
before yesterday. What is called " the new move-
ment " is only the 'passing of dead matter. It
cannot, I confess, be maintained that the present
moment is a propitious one for the tJieatre. Rag-
time and Futurism are holding carnival on our
boards ; but soon they too may be swept away into
the limbo of the half-remembered, along with the
stucco statues, tlie faded photographs and the crinoline
classics of a bygone day. And almost before this
printers' ink is dry the fickle public, sated with the
ephemeral, may return once more to the ample bosom
of the Drama,

JIM

THE VINDICATION OF A MISUNDERSTOOD

MICROBE

JIM

The Vindication of a Misunderstood

Microbe

TTTE live in the age of Wonder. To-day infant
~ ' Science, groping and stumbling towards the
light, leads Truth by the hand. In front of them
dances a will-o'-the-wisp — it is Imagination, blind
seer in the dark, weaving in his passage gossamer
bridges of fancy across the morasses of Ignorance,
and lighting up the mysteries of the Unseen
World. Beyond, as in a transformation-scene of
phantasmagoric post-impressionism, we dimly dis-

75

Jim'

cern the minarets of the spaceless Temple of Nature
— in whose republic all is equality, whose tiniest
atom is as important as her highest development.

Flesh itself, the superstructure of the bones of
boastful man, is builded of minute organisms
which in turn hold rank with the cataclysms of
Nature, where order is but the spawn of chaos,
and reason itself but the accidental offspring of
madness fatigued.

But let us descend from the realms of trans-
cendental blague to the brass tacks of my modest
tale. My tale is of a microbe, and his name is
Jim.

It was thus I made his acquaintance :

I have for friend a surgeon, one of the glories
of medical research, who in his leisure moments
— and they are few — is good enough to discuss
with me the mysteries of the unseen world, as
revealed by science. Such is his grasp of his
subject that my friend Pipp (for that is his name)
speaks in terms of familiarity of the countless
myriads of inhabitants which reside in and govern
each of our bodies. It is to the elucidation of the
secret which has hitherto impenetrably shrouded
this unknown world that Science to-day is bending
its efforts. Soon the microbe will be recognised
as the actual ruler of the universe ; through me
to-day it is for the first time allowed articulate
utterance. If good and evil govern the world, it

76

Jim

is because the opposing forces of beneficent and
malignant microbes arc constantly at war in the
human body. On the beneficent microbe is
dependent not only the health, the resistive
strength of our bodies, but it will be seen by
the revelations which I am privileged to make
that our very mental state is determined by these
denizens of the blood, to-day (thanks to mc) no
longer the dumb slaves of darkness and ignorance.

The dawn of the rule of the beneficent microbe
is at hand — it is the triumph of health over dis-
ease. With a proper understanding of this great
question we shall be enabled to control the evil
germs that have afflicted mankind from its inception,
and thus allow free play to the energies of the true
friends of man. It may even be that we are on
the threshold of discoveries which may reveal to
us the yet deeper mysteries of the soul-world.
In making public the facts which placed me at
one bound in intimate communication with the
occult world, I do not as a mere layman ask
credence at the hands of a sceptical community,
bounded, as it has hitherto been, by the precise
revelations of a material science. I am aware that
it may even be argued that my discoveries are
traceable to an abnormal physical condition, in
which the mind is subject to hallucinations. I do
not dogmatise : I merely record what happened.

In a busy life such as mine, it is impossible to

Jim

follow up the clues which momentary exaltation
may reveal — impressions which we may not be
able to recapture in the rush through space. I
will now describe what happened in the plainest
words.

My revelations came through the simple agency
of a microscope.

My scientific friend motioned me to his arm-
chair and pressed the microscope into my hand.

" Look at that little fellow," he said in his
matter-of-fact manner. " That is the warrior who
does battle for mankind ; he is in us all, fighting
the forces of death which are constantly besetting
us. He is the most important factor with which
modern surgery has to deal. His full Latin name
is Streptococcus erysipalus, but I call him ' Jim *
for short. Just you turn your eye on him."

I looked at Jim through the microscope, and
he seemed to squirm, as though resenting the
gaze of man. So powerful is the unique micro-
scope possessed by my friend Pipp that I could
actually see the expression in the face of the
imprisoned microbe. While its body resembled that
of the ordinary tadpole, the face of this world-
weary aristocrat of the blood was strangely fascinat-
ing— not to say haunting. By its side the counten-
ance of Mr. Arthur Balfour would appear plebeian.
It seemed to me that a kind of sympathy was at
once established between our two organisms.

78

Jim

Many a time had I looked upon the malignant
microbes whose faces resembled those of evil men
I had met in life. The complacent grin of the
s\veater of labour, the leer of the blackmailer, the
perennial smile of the man who is perpetually
denying charity : all these were familiar to me.
What a contrast was here !

As I gazed at this curious mite, I became con-
scious that I was undergoing a strange mental
transformation — a sensation that I had only expe-
rienced in an operation under ether. The eyes of
the bacillus appeared to grow larger and larger,
until they seemed to draw me through their sockets
into the inner recesses of the magic world. I half
realised that I was under hypnotic influence. In
my right hand I held a pencil ; a piece of foolscap
paper was by my side ; and in this condition I
wrote down what Jim (for I had suddenly become
perfectly familiar with the subject of my tale)
imparted to me in my trance. Though it would
be ridiculous to suppose that our intercourse was
conducted through the medium of the English
language, yet it was thus on waking that I found
the conversation recorded on the sheets of fools-
cap at my side. It is obvious that the confidences
made to me could only have been through the
means of telepathy which it would now appear
can be set up between every kind of vital organism.

Thus the record begins :

79

Jim

" You must not ask me about what is before
us ; only what is past can be vouchsafed. I am
a part of Hfe — for life springs from me. I am
the primeval germ from which mankind was
evolved. I know all that has gone since the be-
ginning, for my memory is not like man's, con-
fined to his own life ; I remember through all my
ancestry. No, there is no beginning, as there is
no end. It is thus : "

Here the tadpole-like organism swallowed its
tail and described a circle. I understood.

The record continues :

" It is idle to suppose that life is contained
only in man, in animals, and vegetables — ^life is
everywhere. At this moment your body is sur-
rounded by an encircling army of microbes, con-
stantly fighting for you against the onslaughts of
inimical microbes, the emissaries of death. Yes,
within a radius of some miles I see your surround-
ing retinue now. It is through this army of
satellites that man influences and magnetises his
fellows. You cannot account for your likes and
dislikes. You cannot control the affections. Love
itself is but the sympathetic mating of these
microbes. You are unconscious why you influ-

* Illustration by the author.
So

Jim

ence or arc influenced by another human — the
power of will itself, the exercise of one mentality
over another, or over tens of thousands of other
human beings, is dependent on the force of the
microbes that attend you. Men call this force
personality. My advice to mankind is : ' Tend
your microbes with care, for on them depends
your wel' being.'

" No, death has no terror for me, for as my
life in this body departs it takes new shape ; it
may be that in my next state I shall glow in a
fire or form part of a miasmic vapour. See, as I
speak to you I give birth to a million progeny."
(He did.) " If you put me on your tongue, I may
fight a battle in your body against my eternal
enemy Evil. I remember how an ancestor of mine
saved Rome. He and I — for I am he and he
is I — fought a mighty battle in the body of Julius
Caesar. I will relate it to you.

" Caesar was afflicted with epilepsy. A great
battle was in progress at a place called Bicentium.
Nine times had the Roman general beaten
back the hordes which attacked his position in
overwhelming numbers ; for three nights Caesar
had not slept. Our own army of beneficent
microbes (called the Pink-faces) which inhabited
his brain, had become weaker and weaker, while
the malignant forces (the Greentails) were gaining
strength ; so much so, indeed, that Caesar's body
G 8i

Jim

began to collapse. Night had fallen ; around him
stood his generals, eager for instructions, for the
decisive moment of the great battle was at hand.
In the hour of victory Caesar had fallen into a
trance. To follow up the victory meant the
saving of Rome, Its destruction or safety depended
on one man ; the life of that one man was in turn
dependent on the power of the Pink-faces to over-
come the Greentails which swarmed in overwhelm-
ing numbers in his brain. Of the Pink-faces I
was in supreme command. The world's history
was hanging on my power so to direct the animat-
ing fluid through the arteries of the great general's
brain that genius might assert itself over the sloth
of disease. The main artery of Caesar's brain was
dammed up by dead and poison-engendering Pink-
faces. To save Caesar meant a mighty effort.
Few men had shown greater consideration for his
army of beneficent microbes than had Julius
Caesar. Often in great moments would he give
to his brain fumes of rich heroising wines, and for
this we were grateful. In the millionth part of a
moment I decided on an almost forlorn hope
which should save the life of the great man, turn
the fortunes of the fight, and so save Rome.

" The coup demanded a great sacrifice of life ;
only sixteen myriad Pink-faces were left in Caesar's
veins. It was all -important that the Greentails
should be lulled into inertia, and to this end I

82

Jim

decided that fifteen myriad of us should be sacri-
ficed. I knew they must be overwhelmed by the
hundred myriad o' Greentails who were hunger-
ing. Accordingly, we made entrenchments of
moribund microbes, behind which I encamped
our reserves of one myriad of picked bacilli.
The fifteen myriad I sent forth to battle, know-
ing their fate full well. ' Go forth,' I said,
' as food for our immortal enemies the Green-
tails ! ' The Pink-faces agreed as one microbe,
and with a faint bacillic cry of ' Ave, Caesar —
morituri te salutant ! ' they sallied forth.

" It was a holocaust — but an effectual one.
Soon the Greentails were gorged, sated, and inert.
It was one of the moments of the world's history.
At the command from me, we broke through our
entrenchments and fell upon the Greentails, whose
very sentries were asleep. Within ten minutes
all the Greentails had been destroyed by the
victorious Pink-faces. The healthy blood was once
more allowed to rush through Caesar's brain, and
waking from his stupor he gave orders that twenty
thousand Romans should go forth into the night
to attack the enemy numbering one hundred
thousand. These twenty thousand were to march
to certain annihilation, while the remaining ten
thousand were to steal secretly through the passes
and attack the Gauls in the rear. (This plan of
battle was clearly inspired by my own operation

83

Jim

in Caesar's brain.) On rushed the twenty thousand
Romans to certain death ; they were overcome
by the enemy who occupied the forts left empty
by our ten thousand, who now, led by Caesar him-
self, made the encircling movements towards the
enemy's rear. While the Gauls were feasting in
celebration of their victory, they were fallen upon
by Caesar's army and were dispersed in all direc-
tions, leaving twenty-five thousand men slain on
the field. This is a brief history of the battle of
Bicentium.

" Yes," continued Jim, " I live by destroying
evil ; I am an eater of evil — my digestion requires
this stimulus, for the beneficent microbe is not
cannibalistic — our own kind disagrees with us.
In order to live, we must be constantly at war
with evil. Men say that two negatives make a
positive. We microbes hold the paradox equally
true (as most paradoxes are) that two positives
make a negative, for if good eats good, we die !
We perish of perfection."

To perish of perfection, I thought — how
wonderful an end ! If that end could be vouch-
safed to mankind — to die of a disease called
BEAUTY ! That instead of dying of the ugliness
of disease, we might mercifully become more and
more perfect as we approached death, so that
our loved ones might stand round our deathbed

84

Jim

in mute admiration, gazing upon the lovely climax
of life, and the vanishing point of Beauty —
Death ! That our end should be as a beautiful
song fading into silence, or as a fountain rising
higher and higher till, kissing heaven, it should
spend its splendour in prismatic spray and so
gently fall into the peaceful basin of Eternity.

To perish of perfection — yes, that is the ulti-
mate goal of humanity ! My brain was obsessed
with this ideal. Then I underwent a swoon
within a swoon, wherein it seemed to me that I
was on the threshold of a great discovery — the
ultimate perfection of mankind. A kind of patent
millennium presented itself to my frenzied brain
— the survival of good by the extermination of
evil. In my dream it seemed to me that I was
the great benefactor of mankind. In the visions
of sleep it is difficult to release one's second being
from the realities of life. I had often wondered,
in patting little children on the head, why they
had a soft spot in the middle of their skulls. In
my dream I set up a laboratory, and after dis-
secting several monkeys and some babies, I arrived
at the conclusion that through this yet open
channel one could, by an infusion of myriads of
beneficent microbes, destroy those other malignant
microbes which go to make the vicious part of
our natures. A new conception of ethics filled my
mind. What is virtue ? The preponderance of

8s

Jim

Pink-faces in us. What is vice ? The preponderance
of Greentails. The millennium was in sight on
the distant horizon of my imagination. I was
acclaimed the greatest benefactor of mankind.
Standing on the plinth of the Nelson column, I
imparted my great discovery to a mass meeting
in Trafalgar Square. The meeting was presided
over by the Archbishop of Canterbury ; on his
right His Grace was supported by Lord Charles
Beresford and Mr. Winston Churchill, cheek by
jowl ; while on his left sat Mrs. Pankhurst in
jet, and Mr. Gordon Craig, the president of the
Siberian Stage Society. As I write, the echo
of the cheers that greeted my announcement still
rings in my ears. The new world had begun —
the reign of the beneficent microbe. All humanity
flocked to the National Hospital which bore my
name. Children were brought from all corners of
the earth that they might submit to the system
of inoculation by which the antiseptic of virtue
exterminated in early youth the vice which in
past ages had afflicted the human race.

In my trance I was swiftly projected through
the centuries to witness the triumph of my own
genius. On every side I saw statues and alms-
houses erected in my honour. Wars had ceased
automatically ; theft was unknown. The Ten
Commandments were no longer taught at school,
for none had been broken for centuries. Crime

86

Jim

was unheard of ; passion was dethroned, and in
its place there reigned a kind of platonic free love.
I stalked for centuries through a bloodless neutral-
tinted world.

But gradually it seemed to me that a trans-
formation took place ; I peered into the new
world — it was neutral-tinted — there were no vices,
consequently there were no virtues. It was borne
in upon me that in the march of centuries the
machinery of the world had become rusty.
Butchers' meat did not arrive in the morning,
and the necessaries of life became scarcities ; even
the common potato was a luxury. I began to
realise the imperfection of perfection !

Time rolled on. I looked again, and all man-
kind— men and women — were on their knees
praying to me to give them back their vices ; and
I realised that the old world — the wicked old
world — had been run by the vices, that it was
greed and envy and avarice that caused the
wheels of the world to revolve. I stood in a very
havoc of peace, impotent to restore the imper-
fections for which humanity was shrieking.

Suddenly I seemed to waken from my paren-
thetic dream. My eyes were once more fixed on
the face at the other end of the microscope. Then
Jim spoke again :

" There can be no perfection."

87

" You mean," said I, " that if there were no
evil in the world, there would be no good ? "

" You've hit it," retorted Jim. (The slang was
his — not mine.) He continued : " All subsists by
elemental strife, and passions are the elements of
life."

" You are quoting Pope," said I.

" No," Jim replied ; " Pope quoted me. I
inhabited his brain at the time he wrote his Essay
on Man, and I inspired the passage with which
you appear to be familiar."

" A curious coincidence," I remarked.

" Do you think so ? " said Jim coldly.

" Now I see," I ventured. " What is true
among microbes is true among us humans. If
there were no vices there would be no
virtues."

A silence more eloquent than words fell upon
me ; it was the silence of wisdom.

" Tell me one thing more — you who hold the
mystery of all the past ages — tell me what of the

future ? What of eternity ? What " I cried

in a mad frenzy of egotism, " what of the life
hereafter ? Vouchsafe to me the secret of Immor-
tality ! "

A look came over the face of the microbe, com-
pared with which that of the eternal sphinx was
frankly communicative. A guttural sound, like
that emitted by an inarticulate telephone, filled

88

Jim

my head. The hand that held my pencil seemed
paralysed. I was suddenly shot back through the
eye of the world-large microbe, which seemed
momentarily to shrivel to a speck. I felt a heavy
human hand on my shoulder. I had awakened
from my trance.

" What's the matter, old man ? " It was the
everyday voice of my friend Pipp- I put down
the microscope and gazed at the MS. in front
of me, the last sentences of which were blurred
and vague as the strokes of a madman conducting
an imaginary orchestra of apes.

" Take three long breaths," said Pipp.

I took them. " I have been talking to Jim,"
I said.

" And a precious lot of nonsense you've written
down," my friend replied.

" Who knows ? " said I. " The longer I live,
the less do I scoff at the manifestations of the
immaterial. You only deal with what you see —
I have been in touch with him — with Jim — and
Jim knows." So saying, I passed my forefinger
over the piece of glass on which the now invisible
body of Jim had lain, and applied it to my
tongue.

" Ah, my friend," said the doctor, looking
somewhat anxiously into my face. " You pull
yourself together — you want a rest-cure. Now I
come to think of it, I always thought there was

89

Jim

a queer look in your eyes. Let me prescribe a
tonic for you."

" Thanks," I replied ; " I have eaten Jim,
and I feel strangely better,"

Pipp and I are still friends — with a differ-
ence. We never speak of Jim.

AFTER-THOUGHT

How true all this remains — how unassailable !

90

THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY

Being an Address delivered at the Royal Institution

THE IMAGINATIVE FACUIXY

WHEN the gift of Imagination was conferred
upon mankind, a double-edged sword, gar-
landed with flowers, was thrust into baby-hands.
Just as the highest joys which are known to us are
those of the imagination, so also are our deepest
sorrows the sorrows of our fantasy. Love, ambition,
heroism, the sense of beauty, virtue itself, become
intensified by the imagination, until they reach that
acute and passionate expression which renders them
potent factors for good or evil in individuals. Even
so has the imagination ever been the strongest power
in fostering the aspirations, in shaping the destinies
of nations. It is the vision through the lens of
which we see the realities of life, either in the
convex or in the concave, diabolically distorted
or divinely out of drawing.

The theme is a somewhat wide one; and a
vague self-persuasion hints to me that wiser
and profoundcr things have been written and
spoken of it than any to which I shall be

93

The Imaginative Faculty

able to give utterance. But valour is the better
part of discretion, and no plagiarist is so pro-
lific as he who does not read. Happily, or
unhappily, I happen to be one of those whose
valour has not been blunted by too much specu-
lative reading, whose imagination has not been
cramped by research, nor warped by scientific
knowledge. Indeed, I had at first thought of
styling my address. The Imaginative Faculty, with
some Reflections on the Pernicious Habit of Reading
Books, but that the sub-title seemed to me to
smack of a levity not entirely in harmony with
the classic — shall I say austere ? — traditions of the
assembly which I have the distinguished honour
of addressing — an honour which I value the more
since it is now conferred for the first time on a
member of my calling.

It is, I say, this very abstinence from that
delightful vice of annexing the thoughts of others
through the medium of books which has embold-
ened me to explore the giddy heights and latent
tracts of the imagination, regardless of the land-
marks erected by those who have trodden its terri-
tory less falteringly ; but just as each eye will
catch a different reflection of a landscape, just
as a musical instrument possessing but a limited
number of notes will yet admit of an infinite
variety of combination, likewise I may be so fortu-
nate as to give some variations of the eternal

94

The Imaginative Faculty

melody whose leit-motif poets and thinkers have
sung to mankind. And in endeavouring to narrow
down the discussion of this imaginative faculty to
its influence on my own art, I shall at least be able
to speak from personal observation and, in that
sense, with the authority of experience.

" Can acting be taught ? " is a question which
has been theoretically propounded in many a
magazine article, and has vexed the spirit of count-
less debating societies. It is answered in practice
on the stage, and, I think, triumphantly answered,
in the negative. Acting, in fact, is purely an
affair of the imagination — the actor more than
any other artist may be said to be the " passion-
winged minister of thought."

Children are born actors. They lose the faculty
only when the wings of their imagination are
weighted by self-consciousness. It is not every-
one to whom is given the capacity of always re-
maining a child. It is this blessed gift of receptive
sensibility which it should be the endeavour (the
unconscious endeavour perhaps) of every artist to
cultivate and to retain.

Tliere are those who would have us believe
that technique is the end and aim of art. There
are those who would persuade us that the art of
acting is subject to certain mathematical laws,
forgetting that these laws are but the footnotes

95

The Imaginative Faculty

of adroit commentators, and in no sense the well-
springs of art. What I venture to assert is that
all that is most essential, most luminous, in acting
may be traced to the imaginative faculty. It is
this that makes the actor's calling at once the most
simple and the most complex of all the arts. It
is this very simplicity which has caused many to
deny to acting a place among the arts, and which
has so often baffled those who would appraise the
art of acting as a precise science, and measure it
by the yard-measure of unimaginative criticism.
Yet in another sense no art is more complex than
the dramatic art in its highest expression, for in
none is demanded of its exponent a more delicate
poise, a subtler instinct ; none is more dependent
on that acute state of the imagination, on that
divine insanity which we call genius.

The actor may be said to rank with, if after,
the philosopher. He, like the philosopher, is
independent of recognised laws. The histrionic
art is indeed essentially a self-governed one. Its
laws are the unwritten laws of the book of nature,
illuminated by the imagination.

But if the actor can claim exemption from
academic training, it would be idle to affirm that
he is independent of personal attributes, or that
he can reach any degree of eminence without those
accomplishments which the strenuous exercise of
art alone can give. His Pegasus, however, should

96

The Imaginative Faculty

be tamed in the broad arena of the stage rather
than in the enervating stable of the Academy.

In aeting, in fact, there is an infinity to learn,
but infinitely little that can be taught. The
actor must be capable, of course, of pronouncing
his native language, and of having a reasonable
control over the movements of his limbs ; but,
thus equipped, his technical education is prac-
tically complete. He is his own " stock-in-trade."
The painter has his pigments, the poet his pen, the
sculptor his clay, the musician his lute ; the actor
is limited to his personality — he plays upon himself.

To give free range to the imaginative quality
is the highest accomplishment of the actor. He
whose imagination is most untrammelled is he
who is most likely to touch the imagination of
an audience. To arrive at this emancipation of
the mind is his ultimate and highest achievement.
The development of this sensitive or receptive
condition into the creative state whereby he can
rouse the imagination of his hearers depends
largely on the surrounding influences of life. A
general knowledge of men and things is, of course,
the first essential ; but I doubt whether education,
in its accepted sense, is so necessary or indeed
desirable in an artistic career as it is in what I
may call the more concrete walks of life. The
midwife of science is sometimes the undertaker
of art.

H 97

The Imaginative Faculty

I have touched upon what, in its restricting
influence on the imaginative faculty, I have called
the pernicious habit of reading books — a practice
which in its too free indulgence may tend to fetter
the exercise of that imagination and that observa-
tion of life which are so essential to the develop-
ment of the artist. Some people are educated by
their memories, others by observation, aided by
the imagination. One man will be able by a look
at a picture, or by the scanning of an old manu-
script, to project himself into any period of his-
tory ; while another will by laborious unimagin-
ative study acquire no more artistic inspiration
than can be obtained by learning the " Encyclo-
paedia Britannica " by heart. Shakespeare shows
us what he thinks of pedants :

" Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks ;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books."

I wonder what Bacon would have said to this ! I
have often noticed that those who devote their spare
energies to indiscriminate reading acquire a habit
of thinking by memory, and thus gradually lose the
faculty which the spontaneous observation of life
tends to quicken. Their thought becomes artificial
— they think by machinery — originality loses its
muscle ; the memory is developed at the expense
of the imagination. Take any incident of every-

98

The Imaginative Faculty

day life — to the man who is not in the habit of
exercising his imagination it will appear as a
vulgar fact ; to him who sees the same incident
with the dramatic, the imaginative eye, it will
give birth to an original thought, which is often
more vital than a quotation.

The education of the artist, then, should be
directed rather to the development of the imagina-
tion than to the cold storage of memory. For
purposes of immediate information the British
Museum is always open to him ; the judges of the
land are ever ready to set him right on points of
law, into a misapprehension of which a too lively
imagination may have led him.

I am so bold as to think that a University
education, which is so helpful to success in other
callings, may be a source of danger to the artist.
The point of view is apt to become academic,
the academic to degenerate into the didactic —
for all cliques, even the most illustrious, have a
narrowing tendency. The development of those
qualities which are so favourable to distinction in
other callings may tend to check in the artist that
originality which is so essential to the exercise
of our fascinating, if fantastic, calling. I main-
tain that such surroundings, and the influences of
a too prosperous society, may tend to hinder rather
than to foster the growth of this sensitive plant,
which will often flourish in the rude winds of

99

The Imaginative Faculty

adversity, and perish in the scent-laden salons of
fashion.

To argue that the artist should shut himself
off from the world, and wrap himself round with
a mantle of dignified ignorance, would of course
be absurd. I have already said that a knowledge
of men and things is essential to him, and this
knowledge is manifestly impossible unless he be
in sympathetic touch with his generation, for we
cannot give out what we have not taken in. His
should be the bird's-eye view. But the allurements
of society should never be allowed to absorb or
enslave him, lest after sipping its enervating narcotic
he should drift from the broad stream of life into the
sluggish backwater of self-indulgence. The poet,
like the soldier, may " caper nimbly in a lady's
chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute," but if
he dance a too frequent attendance in the ante-
chamber of fashion, the jealous muse deserts him,
and the poet's song henceforth finds utterance in
the lisping treble of the " vers de socieU,^' and a
fitful inspiration in the chronicling of an illustrious
birth or a serene demise. It takes a genius to
survive being made Poet Laureate — indeed, this
official reward might often be conferred only on
the poet when he is dead, to benefit his family
and to point out the beauties of his works to an
otherwise indifferent posterity.

Of all the fetters which cramp the imagination,

lOO

The Imaginative Faculty

none is so frequent as self-consciousness. With
many of us this failing becomes a disease. The
actor is more hable to its attacks than any other
artist, since he cannot separate his personahty from
his work. This is the necessary condition under
which he works ; he cannot, hke the poet or the
painter, choose his mood — he is the slave of the
moment. Under what disadvantages would a
painter work if his patron were standing at his
elbow watching each stroke of his brush !

It is only when the mind of the actor is emanci-
pated from the trammels of his surroundings that
his imagination is allowed full play. The nervous-
ness which afflicts him in his first performance of
a new role will often paralyse his imagination ;
though it is true that the dependence on this
imaginative faculty varies in individuals.

I remember a first night some years ago when
I was reduced to a state of mental and physical
pulp ; at the end of the first act the brilliant and
witty author entered the green-room of the theatre.
" Well, and how did I get on ? " I asked, hungry
for encouragement. Scanning my trembling and
perspiring form, the author observed : " I see your
skin has been acting, at all events."

This self-consciousness, which will often hinder
rather than stinmlate the nervous energy, is, I
think, a curiously English characteristic, and is
due in many instances as much to early training

lOI

The Imaginative Faculty

as to an inborn tendency. Our Irish brothers —
or should I say cousins ? — owing to the posses-
sion of a more untrammelled imagination, are not
nearly so subject to its influence. It is this happy
superiority to public opinion that renders the
average Irishman such a fluent orator. Most
good actors have either Irish or Jewish blood.
To the average Irishman is given the faculty of
seeing the incidents of life with a dramatic eye,
and he has an infinitely greater facility in clothing
them in picturesque language. In him the journal-
istic instinct is strongly developed. A somewhat
bloodless battle was fought during the Egyptian
war — the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. A newspaper
discussion arose as to the pronunciation of this
word. The question was whether it should be
pronounced according to the frenzied patriotism
of the Irish war correspondent :

" There they plied the bloody sabre
On thy plains, oh Tel-el-Kebir 1 "

or whether, as the less impassioned and less
imaginative Saxon might put it :

" The fighting was not too severe
Upon thy plains, Tel-el-Kebir 1 "

In order to emancipate the mind from this
self-consciousness — in order, in fact, to be at his
best — the actor will sometimes have recourse to
stimulants. This habit has proved the ruin of

I02

The Imaginative Faculty

many a great actor. In his effort to reach that
tingling condition of the nervous system which
enables him, in forgetting himself, to impress his
audience, the actor may find the grave of his
career. Two homely instances of the futility of
this endeavour to conquer self-consciousness by
artificial means have come within my knowledge.
The first came to me at second hand through an
acquaintance, himself a most respectable, not to
say eminent, member of society, whose boon com-
panion of his college days was an extremely well
regulated but highly intellectual youth, to whom
the one stumbling-block in life was that he
could not rid himself of an overpowering self-
consciousness. This cast a gloom over his
whole life, and prevented him from playing a
convivial part at those functions which I believe
are called " Wines " — occasions on which under-
graduate youth scale those higher altitudes of
poetic sentiment, and plumb those lower depths
of philosophic pessimism, which vary with the
fluctuations of the alcoholic barometer. He com-
plained that even on these uproarious occasions
his self-consciousness was ever present, reproach-
ing him for the reprehensible condition which he
vainly strove to attain. There he sat, a perennial
skeleton at the feast. My friend suggested that
on the very next opportunity which offered itself
he should by a painstaking assimilation of the

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The Imaginative Faculty

grape make one herculean effort to rid himself of
that chronic self-consciousness which weighed so
heavily upon him. The well-regulated youth gave
his word of honour that he would yield himself
to the wildest debauchery. And he did. That
very night he joined in the revels of his intellectual
inferiors. My friend awaited his return in anxious
expectation. At 4 a.m. he heard a noise as of
someone falling upstairs, and soon his companion
appeared in the doorway in an advanced state of
alcoholic decomposition. " Alas ! " said he, " my
legs are drunk, my tongue is drunk, but I haven't
lost my self-coshiousness."

The other instance was that of an actor. In
the scene between Othello and Brabantio, Bra-
bantio was being played by an old actor of the
sound and furious school, who was strangely
uncertain in his movements as well as in the
words of his part. He had reached the well-
known injunction to Othello :

" Look to her. Moor, if thou hast eyes to see ;
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee,"

which he stuttered forth thus —

" Look after her, Othello, keep your eye on her ;
She has made a fool of her father and may do the
same to you."

He staggered off the stage, and, weeping
bitterly, fell into the arms of an actor. " Young

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The Imaginative Faculty

man," he said, " let this be a lesson to you. I have
been on the stage for forty-five years, and this is
the first time I have ever suffered from stage fright."

I have endeavoured to show how the imagina-
tive faculty in acting may be cramped by self-
consciousness, and how susceptible it is to social
and other influences which surround the life of the
artist. In the same way it is also susceptible of
infinite cultivation if left to its own devices.

I am willing to admit that every artist works
according to his own method ; but I maintain
that that art is likely to produce the greatest effect
which is least reliant on what are called the canons
of art ; that is to say, that art is the more vital
which springs spontaneously from the yielding up
of the artist to his imagination. I have known
actors who frequently arrive at many of their best
effects through patient study ; indeed, I believe,
great actors have been known to study each gesture
before a looking-glass. This seems to me, never-
theless, a mistaken system, and one certainly
which would be destructive to the effects of those
who prefer to rely on the mood of the moment.
That genius is best which may be described as an
infinite capacity for not having to take pains.

Another aspect of our art which has of late been
much debated is whether it is desirable that the

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The Imaginative Faculty

actor should or should not sink his individuality
in the part he is playing ; whether, in fact, the
actor should be absorbed in his work, or the work
be absorbed in the actor. It seems to me, in spite
of all that certain writers are never tired of dinning
into our ears, that the higher aim of the artist is
so to project his imagination into the character
he is playing that his own individuality becomes
merged in his assumption. This indeed is the
very essence of the art of acting.

I remember that when I first went upon the
stage I was told that to obtain any popular success
an actor must be always himself, that the public
even like to recognise the familiar voice before he
appears on the scene, that he should, if possible,
confine himself to what was called " one line of
business," and that he should seek to cultivate a
certain mannerism which should be the badge
of his individuality. Surely, this is an entirely
erroneous and mischievous doctrine !

Indeed, I will go so far as to maintain that
the highest expression in every branch of art has
always been the impersonal. The greatest artist
that ever lived was the most impersonal, he was
the most impersonal because the most imaginative.
I mean our own Shakespeare. Where do we find
him in his work ? The spirit, the style everywhere
— but the man ? Nowhere — except in the sense
le style c'est Vliomme.

1 06

The Imaginative Faculty

Take Othello, for instance, the finest perhaps, in a
dramatic sense, of all his stage-plays. If we think
we have found him in the noble outbursts of the
Moor, in the overmastering passion of the simple-
minded warrior, we lose him immediately in the in-
tellectual sympathy which he seems to lavish on the
brutal cynicism of the subtle and brilliant lago.
In one moment he soars to the very heights of
poetic ecstasy, in the next he descends with equal
ease and apparent zest into the depths of sottish
animalism. We find him in the melodious wail of
Hamlet, we lose him in the hoggish grunts of Falstaff .

What sort of a man Shakespeare was we none
of us know. We are led to believe that he was
an excellent business man, with a taste for agricul-
ture. In his work he becomes effaced — his spirit
is like a will-o'-the-wisp. His mind is like the
Irishman's flea — " you no sooner put your finger
upon him, but ye find he isn't there." His
was essentially a plastic mind — he was capable of
entering into the thoughts of all men, and made
their point of view his own. Nowhere did he insist
on his personal predilections — he was, in fact, the
artist — the creator — he looked upon mankind with
all the impartiality of a god, he laid their hearts
bare with the imperturbability of an inspired
vivisector.

The abiding hold which the play of HamUt has
exercised over so many successive generations is

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The Imaginative Faculty

mainly due to its wondrous mystery which holds
the imagination of an audience enthralled, for, in
the conventional sense, it cannot be said to be a
pattern stage-play. In what a masterful fashion
is the keynote of mystery struck in the very first
scene on the ramparts ! From the moment when
the solitary soldier calls through the night, " Who's
there ? " the imagination of the audience is held
spellbound ; with such marvellous power is it
played upon by the dramatist that from the first
scene a modern sceptical audience accepts the
supernatural basis of the play. Much inspired
nonsense has been written on the subject of Hamlet
by unimaginative commentators. Yet to him
who will approach Shakespeare's masterpiece in
the right spirit, it will be seen to have that sim-
plicity which is characteristic of all great works.

Nearly all the mad doctors have diagnosed
Hamlet's case, and nearly all claim him as their
own. This is the tendency of the specialist. It
is rather a question, I think, as to the sanity of
Hamlet's commentators. An astounding instance
of this super-subtlety — (in itself a symptom of
madness) — is shown in the comments of some of
the German critics. One of these gravely informs
us that the passage, " You know sometimes he
walks for hours here in the lobby," proves beyond
a doubt that Hamlet was really a fat man, for, in
order to reduce his obesity, he took four hours'

1 08

The Imaginative Faculty

regular exercise in the lobby ; but perhaps our
German friend was a specialist in banting. Another
critic, Leo by name, supplies a still more mar-
vellous instance of painstaking misunderstanding
of the obvious in his elucidation of Hamlet's
hysterical outburst at the conclusion of the play-
scene. In this, some actors use the word peacock,
and others pajock, signifying toad. But our critic
throws a new light upon the passage which may
commend itself to some realistic Hamlet of the
future. The word in dispute was, says Leo,
really " hiccup," which was intended as a stage
direction. Our genial wiseacre argues that
Hamlet intended to call the King an ass, and
" ass " certainly rhymes with " was." The pas-
sage, he contends, should read thus :

" For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,
This reahn dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very — ^very — (hiccups)."

Hamlet's indignation is apparently too deep for
words — the very height of tragic emotion finds
expression in a hiccup ! The unimaginativcness
of the critic is in this case absolutely monu-
mental.

In Macbeth we have another instance of the
astounding imaginativeness of Shakespeare. The
test of the greatness of a work is that it is not only

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The Imaginative Faculty

great in itself, but that it is the cause of greatness
in others. A very striking instance of this sug-
gestive fecundity of the poet was told me of Mrs.
Siddons in her playing of the sleep-walking scene.
At the words " All the perfumes of Arabia will
not sweeten this little hand," the conscience-
stricken woman sees with her mind's eye a stain
upon her hand, and, raising it to her mouth,
desperately sucks the imaginary blood from it,
spitting it out as she does so. The daring of this
piece of realism, which might strike the common-
place as vulgar, was in reality a stroke of imagina-
tive genius, and, I am told, produced an electrical
effect upon the audience.

In dramatic literature that work is highest
which is most suggestive, which gives to the artist
as to the spectator most opportunities of weaving
round the work of the poet the embroidery of his
own imagination.

If I may instance a modern play, I should say
that this quality is displayed in an eminent
degree in Ibsen's work The Master Builder. We
know that this play is condemned by some as a
flagrant outrage of conventional form, while others
dismiss it as a commonplace presentation of a
commonplace theme. I must confess that, judged
by Ibsen's plays, Scandinavia, in its sordid
suburbanism, seems to me an undesirable abiding-

I lO

The Imaginative Faculty

place. All the more wonderful is it that the
magician should have been able to conjure up
from this dank soil, which would appear congenial
only to mushroom-growths, such wondrous and
variegated plants. In witnessing this play we arc
moved by its power, we are fascinated by its origin-
ality. Few fail to feel the thud of its pulse. Each
weaves his own version of its message. The master
has gained his end ; he has stirred the imagination
of his audience ; he alone remains sphinx-like,
unexplained ; he is the artist — wise master !

In using Shakespeare as an illustration of the
highest development of the imaginative artist,
and in claiming for his work that impersonality
which I hold to be the distinguishing mark of
his genius, I am far from denying that many of
our greatest writers, many of our greatest painters
and actors, have been those whose personality is
most resonant in their work, but I say that the
intrusion of that personality is not the merit of
their work, but rather its limitation.

No doubt a more easily won popularity is
awarded by that large public which demands an
exhibition of individuality rather than of character-
isation, of personality rather than of imperson-
ation ; yet it is better to strive for the higher,
even if we miss it, than to clutch at the lower,
even if it be within easy reach.

Ill

The Imaginative Faculty

The adroit actor should be able at will to adapt
his individuality to the character he is portraying.
By the aid of his imagination he becomes the man,
and behaves unconsciously as the man would or
should behave ; this he does instinctively rather
than from any conscious study, for what does not
come spontaneously may as well not come at all.
Even the physical man will appear transformed.
If he imagine himself a tall man, he will appear
so to the audience — how often have we not heard
people exclaim that an orator appeared to grow
in height as his speech became eloquent ? If the
actor imagine himself a fat man he will appear
fat to the spectator. There is a kind of artistic
conspiracy between the actor and his audience.
It is not the outer covering, called the " make
up," which causes this impression ; it is the inner
man — who talks fat, walks fat, and thinks fat.
The actor, even though he be peasant born, will
be able by the power of his imagination to acquire
the rare gift of distinction. He will be able, by
its aid to become a king — not the accidental king,
who in actual life may lack dignity, but the king
of our imagination.

It is on record that Napoleon once administered
a rebuke to Talma, with whom he had a dramatic
affinity. The actor, it seems, in playing a Roman
emperor, made violent gestures. Napoleon, criti-
cising this exuberance, said, " Why use these un-

112

The Imaginative Faculty

necessary flourishes ? When I give an order T
require nothing to enforee it — my word is enough.
This is no way to behave as an emperor." The
first Napoleon was a great actor, and his
dramatic instinct was not the least formidable
among those qualities which made him such a
power in the world's history.

As on the stage, so it is in real life ; we are
not what we are — we become what we imagine
ourselves to be. A man is not always what he
appears to his valet. He often finds his truest
expression in his work. A great man will often
appear uninteresting and commonplace in real
life. Who has not felt that disappointment ?
The real man is to be found in his work.

It is this personality which is often obliterated
by his biographer, for detraction is the only
tribute which mediocrity can pay to the great.
This literary autopsy adds a new terror to death.
A man might be permitted to leave his reputation to
his critics, as he would leave his brains to a hospital.

Napoleon was able to imagine himself an
emperor, and, circumstances conspiring with him,
he became one. His enemies thought they were
belittling him by calling him an actor, and the
Pope, whose temporalities he seized, could only
retort " Comediante " ; but the comedian con-
tinued to play his part of emperor while the Pope
was in exile.

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The Imaginative Faculty

The artistic methods of the first Napoleon are
brought into strong rehef when contrasted with
those of his less imaginative nephew. Indeed, the
difference between the imaginative and the un-
imaginative actor is well exemplified in these two.
Had Napoleon the Third possessed the true dramatic
instinct, he would not have been guilty of the
Boulogne fiasco. To impress the populace with
the supernatural significance of his mission, he
had recourse to the stagy device of a tame eagle,
which, as the emblem of empire, was at a given
cue to alight upon him. But the bird, which
had been trained to perch upon his top-hat, dis-
dained his crown. Here we have an illustration
of the futility of unimaginative stage-manage-
ment.

The imagination is the mind's eye. To him
who has it not, life presents itself as a picture
possessing all the merits of a photograph, and
none of the blemishes of a work of art. He who
does not treasure it will lose its use.

Certain lower forms of animals have what
closely resembles a third eye in the middle of their
skulls, and there can be little doubt that this
auxiliary eye was used by our prehistoric ancestors
for the purpose of seeing objects overhead. The
Cyclops was probably a throwback of this species.

In the lower forms of animals, I am told —
in lizards, for instance — this eye is infinitely more

114

The Imaginative Faculty

developed than it is in the higher animals, in whom,
from disuse, it has become practically extinct.
Even so will the imagination, this third eye of the
mind, looking heavenward, lose its function unless
it be exercised. The waning of the imagination
is, next to the loss of his childish faith, the most
tragic thing in a man's life. I can conceive no
fate more terrible than that which befalls the
artist in watching, with still undiminished powers
of self-observation, the slow ebbing of the imagina-
tive faculty; to see it drifting out to sea in the
twilight of life. Better be deprived of sight than
to feel that the world has lost its beauty — for the
blind are happier than the blear-eyed.

A passage in Darwin's " Autobiography " seems
to me a pathetic illustration, and is interesting in
its unflinching self-analysis.

" .... I am not conscious of any change
in my mind during the last thirty years, excepting
in one point presently to be mentioned ; nor, in-
deed, could any change have been expected, unless
one of general deterioration. But my father lived
to his eighty-third year with his mind as lively as
ever it was, and all his faculties undimmed ; and
I hope that I may die before my mind fails to a
sensible extent. . . . Up to the age of thirty,
or beyond it, poetry of many kinds — such as the
works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole-
ridge, and Shelley — gave me great pleasure, and

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The Imaginative Faculty

even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in
Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I
have also said that formerly pictures gave me
considerable, and music very great, delight. But
now for many years I cannot endure to read a
line of poetry : I have tried to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated
me. I have also lost my taste for pictures and
music. Music generally set me thinking too ener-
getically on what I have been at work on, instead
of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine
scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite
delight which it formerly did. On the other hand,
novels, which are works of the imagination, though
not of a very high order, have been for years a
wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often
bless all novelists. A surprising number have been
read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good,
and if they do not end unhappily — against which
a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to
my taste, does not come into the first class unless
it contains some person whom one can thoroughly
love — and if a pretty woman, all the better. . . .
This curious and lamentable loss of the higher
aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history,
biographies, and travels (independently of any
scientific facts which they may contain), and essays
on all sorts of subjects, interest me as much as
ever they did. My mind seems to have become a

ii6

The Imaginative Faculty

kind of machine for grinding general laws out of
large collections of facts, but why this should
have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain
alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot
conceive. A man with a mind more highly organ-
ised or better constituted than mine would not, I
suppose, have thus suffered ; and, if I had to live
my life again, I would have made a rule to read
some poetry and listen to some music at least once
every week ; for perhaps the parts of my brain
now atrophied would thus have been kept active
through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of
happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the
intellect, and more probably to the moral char-
acter, by enfeebling the emotional part of our
nature. . . ."

It would be interesting to know whether the
cultivation of the aesthetic faculties would have
strengthened or weakened in Darwin those other
forces which have made him such a shining figure
in the history of science. It may be that what
was a loss to the man was a gain to humanity, for
to everyone is vouchsafed only a limited power of
concentration.

Nor must it be supposed that Science and Art
are separate and opposing forces ; they are rather
two mighty currents springing from one parent
source. The greatest victories which mind has

117

The Imaginative Faculty

achieved over matter have been due to the soaring
flights of the imagination rather than to a mere
crawling research along the surface of facts.

This hall, wherein Faraday, Huxley, and Tyndall
have spoken, has witnessed displays of the imagina-
tion equal to those of the highest poetry. As the
diver dives for pearls into the depths of the sea,
so does science project itself on the wings of the
imagination into the mists which shroud the vast
unexplained, snatching in its flight the secrets
which solve the mysteries of the universe, and
pointing out to mankind the invisible stepping-
stones connecting the known with the unknown.

It was in this hall that Professor Dewar sum-
moned the elusive and invisible atmosphere, which
since all time has enveloped the earth, and with
the wand of science compelled it to appear before
you in a palpable and visible form. Even so does
the imagination distil from the elemental ether of
thought and truth the liquid air of art.

I have endeavoured to show that, just as the
highest achievement of science is that which we
owe to the imagination, so also is the highest
achievement of art that which carries us out of
the sordid surroundings of everyday life into the
realms of idealised truth. Art's loftiest mission is
to preserve for us, amid the din and clash of life,
those illusions which are its better part — to epitom-
ise for us the aspirations of mankind, to stifle its

ii8

The Imaginative Faculty

sobs, to nurse its wounds, to requite its unrequited
love, to sing its lullaby of death. It is the unwept
tear of the criminal, it is the ode of the agnostic
to immortality, it is the toy of childhood, the
fairyland of the mature, and gilds old age with
the afterglow of youth.

HAMLET FROM AN ACTOR'S
PROMPT BOOK

HAMLET FROM AN ACTOIL'S
PROMPT BOOK

1895.

IT seems somewhat bold to attempt to say any-
thing fresh about Hamlet — a subject upon
which more wise and more foohsh things have been
spoken than upon any theme within the scope of
EngHsh literature. Indeed, it is only by ignor-
ing the vast voluminosity of learned speculation
and ingenious comment that I dare hope to put
forward that which alone can excuse my temerity
— a new point of view. ]\Iy point of view is that
of the actor, and in this declaration I trust I
shall not be held guilty of a too fantastic pre-
sumption, for were not Shakespeare and Hamlet
both actors ? I purpose, then, to approach this
most debated of Shakespeare's masterpieces through
the despised medium of practical experience — I

123

Hamlet

propose, in fact, to attempt to remove the seem-
ing inconsistencies of Hamlet's character with the
aid of an actor's prompt copy.

Hamlet is not only literature — it is drama.
Hamlet himself is human or he is nothing. It is
in the living humanity which animates his whole
being that the unequalled attractiveness of this
great creation lies. It is because Hamlet is
eternally human that the play retains its lasting
hold on our sympathies. We are all potential
Hamlets.

And who more than the actor, in the white
heat of passion, can explore the giddy heights
and latent tracts of Shakespeare's masterpiece ?
He has the privilege — a privilege which alone
would make his life an enviable one — of speaking
those noble words, of being for the time translated
into the higher region of the great poet's greatest
imaginings ; of soaring on the wings of passion
into the rapt heaven of poetic fantasy ; of ex-
periencing personally, in the portrayal of Hamlet,
his youthful aspirations, his scorn of the insolence
of office, and, perchance, his love for the fair OiDhelia.

Like all great works, Hamlet is distinguished
by simplicity ; he who will approach this subject
with the mind of a child will see clearly — it is
only when we look at Hamlet as through the blurred

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Hamlet

microscope of super-subtlety that it becomes a
nebular hypothesis. It is the first duty of the
actor, in his interpretation of the tragedy, to bring
home the poet's meaning. Of course, each is
bounded by his own personality, by the limitation
of his own mental horizon.

The question as to whether Hamlet was mad
or feigning madness has vexed the minds and spoilt
the tempers of countless writers. They have not
the suppleness of mind to understand that a man
may have many facets — that he may be everything
by turns, and everything sincerely — " A pipe for
Fortune's finger to sound what stop she pleases."
Here is a young prince of lofty ideals, whose natural
refinement of mind has been cultivated at the
University of Wittenberg. His sensitive nature
shrinks from the contemplation of the boorish court
where he is as much out of place as a jewelled
ring in a hog's snout. He returns to Denmark
to find a riotous rabble merrymaking over the
nuptials of his own mother with his father's brother.
He sees this hiccoughing monarch sitting on his
honoured father's throne, and reeling towards his
mother's bed. What wonder that the world seems
to him " an unweeded garden that grows to seed,
things rank and gross in nature " ! Hamlet
sickens at the sight — the flood of grief at the loss
of his beloved father and of loathing of the fickle-
ness of his mother engulfs, for the moment, his

1^5

Hamlet

tender passion for the fair Ophelia — and he gives
vent to his feehngs in an outburst on the frailty
of woman.

Hamlet learns from Horatio and his companions
of the apparition of his father's spirit. His pro-
phetic soul already presages foul play, and
through the fog of his suspicions now rises the
blood-red sun of revenge. Up to this point
Hamlet has been a perfectly sane and rational
young man. In the meeting with the Ghost,
again, there is nothing abnormal in his attitude —
he is overcome with awe on beholding his father's
spirit in arms, and is prepared to follow him
regardless of perils. In the second Ghost-scene
Hamlet is overwhelmed with grief and indignation
on learning of the infamy by which his father
met his death. To the actor this is a scene of
intense and prolonged excitement, more exhaust-
ing, because pent up, than perhaps any passage
in the whole play. I have sometimes asked myself,
with that second consciousness of the actor,
whether thus to waste one's vital force could have
any compensating effect upon the audience, for
Hamlet's eyes are fixed on the Ghost, his face is
averted from the public, and probably the actor's
excitement is lost upon them. But, nevertheless,
I conclude that it is necessary for the actor to
undergo this strain of self-excitation in order to
reach that condition of hysteria which overcomes

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Hamlet

Hamlet after the Ghost's departure. Here again
Hamlet, it seems to me, behaves just as any highly
wrought young man would behave on hearing of
the terrible fate which had befallen a beloved father.
He is all on fire to sweep to his revenge with wings
as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love.
But the fire is too fierce — it perforce burns itself
out. And here the actor should make clear to the
audience that physical exhaustion prevents Hamlet
from carrying out the impulse of his mind — the
weakened physical machine is, as it were, unequal
to respond to the promptings of the mind. Hamlet
cries :

" O, all you host of heaven ! O, earth 1 what else ?
And shall I couple hell ? — O, fie 1 Hold, my heart ;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old.
But bear me stiffly up."

And turning towards the castle where his uncle is
still carousing, he continues :

" Oh villain, villain, smiling damned villain."

His passion has reached its climax. He has
drawn his sword, it falls back into its scabbard ;
physical action, the immediate brutal revenge, is
abandoned, and Hamlet cries :

" My tables — my tables — meet it is I set it down."

He turns from the sword to the pen, for his is

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essentially the literary mind. His strength is spent ;
subtlety takes the place of action — the mind is
stronger than the body. Here the same symptom
is shown as in persons who become lightheaded
from physical exhaustion. Hamlet can always,
such is the agility of his mind, travesty his own
emotions, and in this spirit he jots down on his
tablets :

" That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ;
At least, I'm sure, it may be so in Denmark."

This same hysteria continues through the following
scene when Hamlet addresses the Ghost :

" Well said, old mole 1 Can'st work i' the earth so fast? "

The first indication of an apparent aberration
of the mind occurs here. Horatio and Marcellus
come in search of Hamlet and question him as to
his interview with the Ghost. " Oh, wonderful ! "
says Hamlet.

HoR. Good my lord, tell it.

Ham. (Suspiciously.) No; you'll reveal it.
HoR. Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Mar. Nor I, my lord.

Ham. How say you, then ; would heart of man
once think it ? —
But you'll be secret ?
HoR. AND Mar. Ay, by heaven, my lord.

Hamlet is now evidently on the point of
revealing the purport of the Ghost's message.
" There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark,"

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he begins ; then suddenly, his suspicion of
Marcellus asserting itself, he adds, " but he's an
arrant knave."

He continues to pour out " wild and whirling
words," and makes them swear on his sword that
they will never reveal the knowledge of what has
passed that night. Upon being assured of their
secrecy, he tells them clearly that the Ghost is
an " honest " one, and then he opens up to them
what is in his mind. He may hereafter, for his
own purposes, " put on an antic disposition " —
that is to say, feign madness in order to be the
better able to play the detective, and he enjoins
them, by all they hold sacred, not to reveal to
any soul that he is thus by diplomacy about
to undertake what his physical enterprise shrinks
from — the avenging of his father's murder. After
reverently apostrophising the dead King's per-
turbed spirit, he gives his companions the cue to
go. Again he feels unequal to the terrible task
imposed upon him, and cries :

"The time is out of joint: — O cursed spile,
That ever I was born to set it right!"

With his dead father's voice still ringing in his
ears, he goes dazed and exhausted from the scene,
contemplating, may be, with his mind's eye, the
terrible vista of events between him and the goal
of destiny.

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Hamlet

In the second act we find Hamlet busy with
his scheme of feigning madness, for Ophelia tells
her father how Lord Hamlet had come to her in a
disordered mental and physical state, and how by
his demeanour he had affrighted her. The inter-
view probably took place immediately after
Hamlet's meeting with the Ghost. Now this brings
us to a consideration as to how far Hamlet's
mind was overbalanced by the terrible revelation.
Hamlet evidently takes an intellectual and painful
delight in exercising his ingenuity and his wit
upon the various dupes of his feigned madness.
He is, in fact, always an artist — the literary man
who makes copy out of his own emotions for his
ovm. edification. He vivisects his victims, himself
the greatest of these ; the exercise proves fatal.
But in considering the subject of Hamlet's mad-
ness or sanity, let it be borne in mind that never
in his soliloquies, and never in his communings
with Horatio, does he mutter words of madness.
This is my case — the antic disposition is only put
on with those whom he does not trust, or with
those whom he has an interest in hoodwinking.
As presented on the stage, I conceive that Hamlet
enters slightly before his cue, detects the King
and Polonius in their conspiracy, vanishes for a
moment behind the curtains, and then enters
stark, staring mad to Polonius.

" Do you know me, my lord ? " asks Polonius.

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" Excellent well," replies Hamlet ; " you're a
fishmonger." In his moods of madness, Hamlet
takes pleasure in letting his wit run riot — like a
colt in a paddock. On Polonius saying, " My
honourable lord, I will most humbly take my
leave," Hamlet replies, " You cannot, sir, take
from me anything that I will more willingly part
withal — except my life, except my life, except my
life " — leaping at a bound, such is the versatility
of his nature, from the gay to the grave.

In the scene with Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern, who have come to spy upon him, Hamlet
receives them with perfect courtesy till his sus-
picions are aroused. " Beggar that I am, I am
even poor in thanks, but I thank you." And here
comes a point at which, as I have suggested
before, the meaning of the play may be illumined
by stage business. Hamlet, in all the frankness of
his nature, gives his hand to Rosencrantz. He
finds it moist with moisture of nervousness and
treachery. He looks into Rosencrantz's eyes, and,
reading in them a confirmation of the hand's
betrayal, he suddenly asks, " Were you not sent
for ? Is it your own inclining ? Is it a free
visitation ? " And he wrings from the two con-
federates a confession of espionage.

Once satisfied of the correctness of his own
suspicions, Hamlet again puts on " the antic
disposition." " I have of late," he says, " but

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wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone
all custom of exercise ; indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this
brave o'erhanging firmament — this majestical roof,
fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other
thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapours." But here he breaks off, the artist
becomes absorbed by his own eloquence rather
than with its purpose, and with an enthusiasm very
wide from all assumption of madness, he continues
with those splendid words beginning, " What a
piece of work is man ! "

In this scene occurs a passage which seems to
me the keystone of Hamlet's character. It is a
phrase in which the whole tragedy of his life is
bounded as in a nutshell. Hamlet exclaims,
" There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so." In these words we find the clue to
the failure of many a potentially great man. The
man who most succeeds in life is he who only sees
one side. The man whose mental horizon is wide,
who is capable of seeing the good and evil on both
sides, who wanders from the high-road of a fixed
purpose into the by-lanes of philosophical contein-
plation, will not reach his goal so soon as he who
only looks straight ahead, and follows the nose
of purpose unthinkingly. A demonstration of

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this is contained in the written play of Hamlet,
which the brief three hours' traffic of the stage
prevents being shown in action. I refer to the
character of Fortinbras. He sees only one side
of things, and knows precisely what he wants.
And what is the result ? Well, the result is, that
when Hamlet is dead, this essentially practical,
unimaginative young man comes in, and, in the
language of our modern slang, " takes the cake."
Perplexed as he is, Hamlet is only too glad to
turn to the players, in order for the moment to
divert his mind from the contemplation of the
duty which the Ghost has imposed upon him.
And he asks them to give him a taste of their
quality. But the speech of the actor only serves
to remind Hamlet of his dormant duty. And
here may be mentioned a bit of by-play, which
may serve to emphasise what may have been in
Shakespeare's mind. In the course of his recital
of Hecuba's woes, the player makes use of the
exclamation " mobled Queen." Hamlet repeats
the words. This may be the first glimmering of
Hamlet's scheme to expose the King through the
medium of the play, and with a view to illustrat-
ing this, the actor may take out his tablets and
reflectively jot down some rough notes.
Hamlet is now left alone, and throws himself on
a couch. The pent-up stream of hitherto unspoken
thoughts is poured forth in torrents of eloquence

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in the speech, " O what a rogue, and peasant slave
am I ! " It seems to him monstrous that this
player should for the imagined wrongs of Hecuba
(" What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba ? ")
be able to shed tears and to be distracted, while
he himself feels impotent to avenge the bloody
death of his own father. Here again the artist is
paramount. Instead of rushing to the immediate
revenge, he chews the cud of his wrath. To illus-
trate this state of mind, I have introduced the
action of Hamlet making sword-thrusts at the
empty throne at the words, " Bloody, bawdy
villain ! O vengeance . . ." Hamlet, in fact,
loves to " act," while he shrinks from doing the
deed of violence. The actor should suggest that
Hamlet has spent his energy in vain unpackings
of his heart, and the drawn sword drops by his
side, as he cries in the impotence of his despair,
" O, what an ass am I ! . . ." He turns to
the thought of testing the King through the play,
and thus excuses himself for his inaction. " The
spirit that I have seen may be the devil, . . ,"
meaning that the Ghost may be an invention of
the devil to entrap him into murder, to avenge
what may not have been a murder after all !
Hamlet will temporise ; " I'll have grounds more
relative than this," he cries. " The play's the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
Here, again, the actor may illumine the text with

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illustrative by-play. I have thought it permissible
to illustrate the gruesomeness of the situation by
making the stage grow gradually dark. The only
light comes from a huge fire, and with its aid,
Hamlet, kneeling, dashes down on his tablets the
lines to be embodied in the murder of Gonzago —
the speech through which he hopes to " catch the
conscience of the King." This is, of course, a
purely pictorial effect.

In Act III. we find the King, the Queen, and
Polonius scheming to find out from the fair Ophelia
whether Hamlet's madness is due to love or some
other cause, and the meeting of Hamlet and Ophelia
is pre-arranged by them. Ophelia, unwillingly it
may be, consents, and sits down with a book in
her hand before the prie-dieu. Meanwhile the
King and Polonius have concealed themselves, and
Hamlet enters with the words, "To be or not to
be." From her coign of vantage Ophelia listens
to the self-torturings of Hamlet in that great
soliloquy wherein he pours out his very heart,
and she falls upon her knees praymg for her lover.
Hamlet's wondrous words may, perhaps, be thought
thus to gain an added pathos and significance.
Observe here, as in all Hamlet's self-communings
throughout the play, that every word uttered by
him is sane. In this instance he gives vent to
his sighs — as who indeed has not before he reaches

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Hamlet

the middle age of cynicism, and accepts the world
at its own valuation ? He longs for that sleep of
death which shall be the term of all ills ; he rails
at the oppressor's wrongs, at the insolence of office,
as who among us has not railed ? And he laments
the spurns that patient merit from the unworthy
takes. What wonder that a new pity gilds the
love of Ophelia ? So great is Hamlet's shrinking
from the task imposed, that at this moment he
contemplates taking his own life in order to avoid
taking that of the King. Revenge itself is now
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. And
then again the leit-motif rings in our ears — that motif
which, in considering Hamlet's attitude, I cannot
sufficiently insist upon : " There is nothing either
good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Tempest-
tossed, rudderless, anchorless, he stands before
the fair Ophelia, the most pitiable figure the mind
of man has ever conjured up. And seeking the
sympathy of woman — as who has not in such
moments ? — he exclaims, " Nymph, in thy orisons
be all my sins remembered."

We have now come to a scene which has
perhaps more than any other vexed the minds
of the analytical, but which by the aid of im-
aginative stage treatment — and let us always
remember that Hamlet is a stage play — appears to
me to have all the clearness of a blue sky. It
should be the endeavour of the actor (with the

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Hamlet

aid of such imaginative stage business) to make
it so clear. I have taken counsel of many, I have
waded through innumerable comments, but the
following seems to me a simple exposition of a
supposed mystery ;

Oph. Good my lord, how does your Honour for
this many a day ?

Ham, {Leaving her presence, and with infinite sadness.)
I humbly thank you. Well, well, well.

Ophelia stops him. " My lord, I have remem-
brances of yours that I have longed to redeliver ;
I pray you now receive them." From my prompt
book I now take the following : — Hamlet looks
tenderly at Ophelia, as though on the point of
embracing her. But at this moment his hand
falls on the medallion containing his father's
portrait, which he wears round his neck. He is
reminded of the duty imposed upon him — the echo
of his father's voice rings in his ears. His duty
towards his father is more sacred even than his
love for Ophelia. He remembers that oath " to
wipe away all trivial fond records," and he at once
assumes madness, as with a dazed look he says,
" No, not I — I never gave you aught." Of course
Hamlet would remember his gifts if he were sane ;
and his reply is an apparent confirmation of the
contention that Hamlet is mad. Assuming him
to be sane, the explanation is simple enough. I

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turn to my prompt book and I find this note :
Hamlet looks tenderly at Ophelia, as she in words
of gentle chiding thus reproaches him :

" My honour'd lord, you know right well you did ;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich ; their perfume lost,
Take these again ; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord."

Hamlet is filled with love and pity for Ophelia.
But, to him, all womanhood seems smirched by
his mother's act. Has he not exclaimed in the
first act, " Frailty, thy name is woman " ? Here,
it seems to me that the actor may again elucidate
what a hasty reading of the text may not make
clear. Hamlet, according to my view, takes
Ophelia by the hand, and, peering into her face,
asks, " Are you honest ? Are you fair ? " meaning,
is there one woman whom I can trust ? " What
means your lordship ? " Ophelia asks. " That
if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty. . . ." The
line, " This was sometime a paradox, but now
the time gives it proof," is clearly pointed at the
relations between the King and Queen. " I loved
you not," says Hamlet, plucking, as it were, his
heart from his sleeve. Ophelia sinks upon the
couch. " I was the more deceived." Hamlet goes
to her. " Get thee to a nunnery," he says, and

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with great tenderness. His meaning is, " Go away
from the world. Do not drift about in this re-
lentless sea without the anchor of my love," and
he goes on to pour out the confession of his un-
worthiness, so that she may not grieve for him —
*' I could accuse me of such things, it were better
my mother had not borne me. . . . What
should such fellows as I do, crawling between
earth and heaven ? We are arrant knaves all ;
believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery."
At this moment Ophelia in her distress has risen.
A gust of pity and love surges up in Hamlet's nature.
He takes Ophelia in his arms and is about to
kiss her, when over her head he sees the forms
of Polonius and the King, spying through the
arras. " Where is your father ? " he asks Ophelia,
taking her face between his hands. Ophelia
replies, " At home, my lord." Hamlet has trusted
Ophelia, and now it seems that she too is false.
His soul full of loathing, he flings her from him,
crying, " Let the doors be shut upon him that
he play the fool nowhere but in his o^vn house.
P'arewell." Not knowing what is in Hamlet's
mind, Ophelia exclaims, " O help him, ye sweet
heavens." And then Hamlet pours forth a torrent
of words, partly of reproach to Ophelia — words
which sear her soul — partly of pretended madness,
which words are meant for the ears of Polonius
and the King, who are watching. " Go to, I'll

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no more on't ; it hath made me mad ! I say we
will have no more marriages. Those that are
married already — all but one " (meaning the King)
" shall live. The rest shall keep as they are."
And with one more wild exelamation of "To a
nunnery go ! " Hamlet rushes from the room.

I have read that Edmund Kean, in this scene,
used to come on the stage again, and after looking
at Ophelia with tenderness, would smother her
hands with passionate kisses, and rush wildly
away. But it seemed to me that the tragedy of
the situation lay in the fact that Ophelia goes to
her death ignorant of Hamlet's love. And bearing
this fact in mind, I have made a variation in the
" business"; thus after flinging Ophelia from him
and rushing wildly from the room, Hamlet, in a
sudden revulsion of feeling, returns. He finds
Ophelia kneeling at the couch, sobbing in anguish.
Hamlet's first impulse is to console her. But he
dare not show Jiis heart. Unobserved, he steals up
to her, tenderly kisses one of the tresses of her
hair, silently steals from the room, finding his way
without his eyes, giving, in one deep sigh, all his
love to the winds. Ophelia cries : " O, woe is me,
to see what I have seen, see what I see." That
noble and most sovereign reason is now to her,
like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh.
Hamlet's antic disposition has had its desired
effect ; for the King and Polonius are now con-

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vinced of his madness, as is shown in an almost
immediately succeeding passage in the play :

" Madness in great ones must not unmatched go."

Hamlet now re-enters with the players. Pointing
to the manuscript in his hand, he begins :

" Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue,"

In this scene Hamlet is again the artist. He
instructs the players how to hold the mirror up
to nature ; and certainly a more sane exposition
of the whole duty of the actor cannot be imagined,
or a more scathing satire on a deviation from that
ideal. The interview concluded, Hamlet is once
more seen to be exhausted by his own energy. A
sigh escapes him — he sinks into a chair, his head
tossed, like a child's, from side to side. But
Horatio comes ; on him, now that Ophelia is
banished, Hamlet leans. In him he recognises a
man who has those qualities in which he himself
is tragically deficient. Here is a man " whose
blood and judgment are so well commingled that
they are not a pipe for Fortune's fingers to sound
what stop she please." Horatio is indeed the ideal
friend. He is the eternal Boswell who understands
another's nature by sympathy. And, what an
important part in life is played by men of this
restful nature ! If not great in themselves, they have

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that other attribute of genius of being the cause of
greatness in others. Horatio is no courtier. He
seeks no flatterers — to him Hamlet can pour out
his heart, pour out the heart silenced in that
atmosphere of duplicity and self-seeking with
"which it has been surrounded, an atmosphere
which to some natures is the very breath of life.

" Give me that man that is not passion's
slave," Hamlet cries, " and I will wear him in
my heart's core ; aye, in my heart of hearts,
as I do thee." Then, with a gentle reserve, he
adds, " Something too much of this," and returns
to his purpose. After stealing up to the arras to
see if the King is still hiding, he returns to Horatio,
and into the ears of this one friend on whom
he can rely, he pours, in brief but vivid words,
his scheme for catching the King's conscience.
With the very comment of his soul, Horatio is
to watch the King's reception of " The Murder
of Gonzago." Here is to be a first night which
will give the audience pause, unless the Ghost
is a damned one, and Hamlet's imaginations, as
a consequence, " as foul as Vulcan's stithy."
But the festal march heralds the approach of the
Court to the play. And here I may mention
another instance of stage-management which may
make clear a passage that has taxed the ingenuity
of some commentators.

" I must be idle," Hamlet cries, and he at

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once puts on his antic disposition. A court jester
heads the procession ; with him Hamlet converses,
and at him he plays the scene which follows.
" How fares our cousin Hamlet ? " asks the King.
" Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish. I
eat the air, promise crammed. You cannot feed
capons so," pointing to the cocks-combed jester.
The King, surprised, says : "I have nothing to do
with this answer, Hamlet ; these words are not
mine." " No, nor mine now," replies Hamlet,
again pointing to the jester. To him also Hamlet
addresses his comment on Polonius' announcement,
that he had once played Julius Caesar, and that
Brutus had killed him i' the Capitol. " It was a
brute part of him to kill so capital a calf." Here
is a minor point, but Hamlet's punning reply would
be appreciated by this particular listener, and the
touch, light though it be, has been found, I believe,
to lend relief and realism to the scene. The suc-
ceeding coarse remarks which Hamlet addresses to
Ophelia (remarks which have also amazed the
erudite from their being obviously foreign to the
Prince's noble nature) I conceive to have been
directed really to the King's ear. They are,
indeed, episodical additions to the scheme of feigned
madness. As "The Murder of Gonzago " proceeds,
Hamlet, lying at Ophelia's feet, watches the King
from behind the manuscript which he holds in his
hand, gradually crawling snake-like across the

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stage to the foot of the King's throne. A writer
describing Booth's performance at this point, says,
" As the mimic murder is accomphshed, he springs
up with a cry Hke an avenging spirit. It seems to
drive the frightened court before it."

I think that I need not dwell further on the
conduct of that great scene of a play within a
play, during which Hamlet is irrevocably con-
vinced of his uncle's guilt, a scene which never
fails to arouse and arrest the excited attention of
an audience, and which leaves Hamlet a prey to the
hysteria which culminates in the speech, " Now let
the stricken deer go weep," at the end of which
he falls sobbing on Horatio's breast. At the en-
trance of the spy-courtiers, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Hamlet reverts to his antic dispo-
sition, trifling away with withering satire the time
during which he might be accomplishing his un-
doing of the King. Polonius enters, and again
Hamlet dances on the grave of his own emotion
in the exercise of his scathing badinage. The
strain of the tragedy through which his mind has
passed is too great, and in this revulsion he finds
that humorous relief so dear to Shakespeare and
to the hearts of audiences at a play. Dismissing
the false friends, Hamlet is left alone, and there
being no longer any object in assuming madness,
he becomes perfectly sane, and recognises the
necessity of action.

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Hamlet

Here I have made a new departure from the
ordinary acting version of the play. To the
soHloquy beginning with the Hne, " 'Tis now the
very witching time of night," I have added that
other soHloquy of the fourth act, which is, perhaps,
the greatest of all of them, and to which, since
Shakespeare's days, the walls of the theatre have
never or rarely resounded. Those noble lines,
" How all occasions do inform against me, and
spur my dull revenge " (vividly illustrative as they
are of the workings of Hamlet's inner nature, and,
therefore, of the highest importance to the play),
have been banished from the stage, because they
are imprisoned in that episode of the journey to
England which cannot be presented from simple
lack of time. From that prison I have freed them,
by applying them here at a moment of one of
Hamlet's self-communings, to which they seem
equally applicable. And if the transposition be
held to be daring, it may claim the excuse of having
been done in the cause of preserving a poetic
gem. The concluding words of this speech are :
" O from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody
or be nothing worth." And to these, in my version,
the speech beginning " 'Tis now the very witching
time of night " is appropriately joined.

Hamlet now starts on his mission to his mother.
Again his gentle nature asserts itself, and he kneels
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Hamlet

down to pray to the Virgin : " Let not ever the
soul of Nero enter this firm bosom — let me be cruel,
not unnatural — I will speak daggers to her, but
use none." On his way through one of the wind-
ing corridors of the castle, he stumbles upon the
very subject of his intended revenge. He finds
the King praying. The opportunity so long
looked for has come " pat " at last. The soliloquy
in which Hamlet's purpose once more dissipates
itself has been described by Johnson as " too
horrible to be read or to be uttered." Hamlet
finds relief in those terrible words. The scene
is important, because it so clearly reveals that
tenderer side of Hamlet's nature, which makes him
seek for any excuse which may postpone the
shedding of blood. Once more action is sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of philosophy.

In the scene with the Queen, which follows
immediately upon this, Hamlet upbraids his mother
in such passionate words as to lead her to think
he is bent on murdering her. A voice is heard
behind the arras ; Hamlet rushes up, wildly thrust-
ing his sword through the opening — a dead body
falls through the arras. " Is it the King ? " asks
Hamlet ; then, lifting the arras, he finds that
Polonius is the victim of his momentary violence.
He once more turns to his mother, and in words of
passion, in which there is no madness, contrasts the
living husband with the dead. " Look here upon

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Hamlet

this picture and on this — the counterfeit present-
ment of two brothers." There has always been
much hot discussion as to whether the pictures
should be really shown, or whether they should
only be in the mind's eye. Personally, I incline
to think that Shakespeare's intention was that
miniatures should be used. That they were very
generally worn (or rather supposed to be worn)
at the period of the play is beyond question, for
Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in
an earlier scene, speaking of his uncle, " For those
that would make mouths at him while my father
lived will give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats
a piece for his picture in little." But after all, it
is not material to the great issues of the play
whether the miniatures or pictures are pointed
at, or whether their mention is only symbolical.
In a crescendo of passion, Hamlet pours forth
reproaches to the Queen, and in the height of
his frenzy the Ghost of his dead father enters
to whet his son's almost blunted purpose. The
sight of the Ghost is not vouchsafed to the mother,
who cries, " Alas, he is mad." In the scenes in
Act I. the Ghost has appeared to the soldiers as
well as to the practical Horatio, and it cannot,
therefore, be maintained that the apparition is
the creation of Hamlet's disordered brain. Indeed,
after the Ghost's disappearance, Hamlet takes
pains to undeceive his mother as to his madness,

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Hamlet

telling her that he is not really mad, but only mad
in craft, and enjoins her not to let the King suspect
his sanity. After counselling the Queen to lead
a purer life " with the other half," Hamlet ex-
presses his sorrow at having caused the death of
Polonius, and bids his mother good-night, leading
her sternly to the prie-dieu, at which she kneels
sobbing. Hamlet's words are, " I must be cruel
only to be kind. Thus bad begins " ; then fate-
fully he adds : " But worse remains behind."
And so ends the third act of our acting version.

As Hamlet does not appear in the flesh during
Act IV., I need not refer to the events which take
place in its course ; suffice it to say, that there is
nothing which could lead us to a different estimate
of Hamlet's mental condition. In Act V. we find
the two gravediggers digging Ophelia's grave.
The churchyard is, as a rule, made a somewhat
gloomy scene, and here I may mention that I
have thought fit to change the setting. It is a
May-day evening, the sweet-briar is in bloom, the
birds are singing, the sheep-bells are tinkling —
nature is rejoicing while man is mourning. It has
seemed to me that rather than detracting from the
tragic events which pass before our eyes, an added
emphasis is thus supplied by the heartlessness of
nature. Hamlet appears with Horatio, to hear the
gravedigger singing a comic song while he is digging
the grave ; and this gives him an opportunity of

148

Hamlet

indulging his passion for idle philosophy. On seeing
the skull of Yorick he again gives full rein to his
imagination, as he pictures to himself how —

" Imperious Caesar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

But his musings are cut short by the approach of
the mourning procession. Hamlet is overcome
with grief on learning of the fair Ophelia's death.
" P'orty thousand brothers," he cries, " could not,
with all their quantity of love, make up my sum."
That Hamlet deeply loved Ophelia is thus shown.
And in order to emphasise this side of Hamlet's
nature, I have introduced the following effect at
the conclusion of the Graveyard scene. Hamlet
has departed, followed by the King, Queen, Laertes,
and the courtiers. In the church close by, the
organ peals out a funeral march. Night is falling,
the birds are at rest, Ophelia's grave is deserted.
But through the shadows, Hamlet's returning form
is seen gathering wild flowers. He is alone with
his dead love, and on her he strews the flowers as
he falls by her grave in a paroxysm of grief. And
so the curtain falls.

The last scene of all which ends this stranse
eventful history, takes place in the courtyard of
the Palace. Hamlet feels the hand of fate upon
him — but to him death has lost its terror. " If

149

Hamlet

it be now, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come,
it will be now — if it be not now, yet it will come,"
are his words to Horatio. The most determined
quibbler could hardly find symptoms of madness
in Hamlet's latest utterances. With exquisite
grace Hamlet makes his amende and his salute to
Laertes, and proceeds to play with the foils. Here,
in passing, I may touch upon a small point which
nevertheless has been much debated — I mean
the line " Our son is fat and scant of breath."
I take it that Shakespeare wrote " Our son is
faint and scant of breath," and so it is spoken
on our stage. Mark how this reading is borne
out by the dialogue as illustrated by stage
management.

Hamlet and Laertes have been fencing vio-
lently. The King asks that the cup be given
him. Hamlet refuses the drink, resumes the
fencing, and, for the second time, hits Laertes ;
somewhat exhausted with the fight, he rests on
Horatio's arm. The King cries, " Our son shall
win " ; the Queen —

" He's faint, and scant of breath —
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin ; rub thy brows."

The drink is again sent to Hamlet. The Queen
goes to him and says, "Come, let us wipe thy face."
While Hamlet is recovering, the King and Laertes
are afforded an opportunity of their treacherous

150

Hamlet

asides. Now, I maintain that this is a perfectly
sane interpretation of the scene. There is nothing
to indicate that Hamlet was a fat man, and I
believe that the word was originally written
"faint," but that the "i" and the "n" were
somehow dropped out (perhaps they were deleted
by a too humorous prompter, Burbage the actor
having been a fat man !). Moreover, the business
of the scene is exactly that which would apply
to a man who was faint — you would give him
drink and you would wipe his brows. This, it
seems to me, does not apply so well to a man
who was suffering from obesity. But let us have
done with quibble, for Hamlet is dying, struck by
the poisoned sword of treachery ; fate enters his
soul, and, at last, with the instrument of his own
destruction, he kills the King. His last moments
are softened by a sweet sanity. To Horatio his
dying words are addressed.

" If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart.
Absent thee from feUcily awhile.
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story."

Kissing the forehead of his friend, and with his
father's picture on his heart, Hamlet says, with
his last breath,

The rest is silence.
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Hamlet

Here as a rule the curtain falls in silence, but
I prefer to preserve Horatio's beautiful words :

((

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet Prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

And so, with the faint echo of heavenly music
ringing in our ears, the record of Hamlet's storm-
toss'd life closes. The worst that can have been
done has been done — the carnal, bloody and
unnatural acts ; the accidental judgments ; the
deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause ; the
purposes mistook fall'n on the inventor's head —
all these conspiring agents of an unshunnable
destiny have worked their remorseless fill, and the
end is serenity and rest at last. Hamlet sleeps,
for good or ill — for there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so. It is this refrain
which rings once more in our ears as we take
leave of the sweet Prince. It is this philosophic
doubt which hangs like a miasma over our modern
thought, and Hamlet is the most modern of men
— he is not only of to-day, he is of the day after
to-morrow. The sickness which afflicted Hamlet
was what the Germans call grueheln — a kind of
intellectual burrowing which has laid many a
noble nature low. Thought is the great destroyer.
Our fondest teachings crumble in its presence like
castles in the air — right and wrong become blurred

152

Hamlet

and confused when we reflect that there is
nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes
it so.

It has been my aim by the practical assistance
of an actor's prompt book to show that Hamlet's
sup})osed madness was a feigned madness, and
that many of the difficulties of this Shakespearian
masterpiece are really little else than the outcome
of a super-acute but unpractical comment. If to
the pure all things are pure, to the plain-seekers
many things appear plain. And if some of the
alleged obscurities of Hamlet miay be dispelled
by a stage-manager's prompt copy, it should be
remembered that Shakespeare was himself a
stage-manager. The fact must never be lost
sight of that his plays were primarily designed for
the stage, and not for the library ; that though
the greatest of poets, he was an experienced actor
as well ; and that the prompt copies of his own
plays must have been originally filled with stage
business in the highest degree illustrative of the
text — indeed, it is one of the tragedies of literature
that the greater part of them has been lost for
ever.

I have done my best to make myself acquainted
with the works of the literary commentators.

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Hamlet

I have admired — as who has not ? — Goethe's
exquisite comparison of Hamlet's nature to an
oak-tree planted in a costly vase intended only
for love flowers, and Lessing's fine description
of the majesty of buried Denmark as " A Ghost
before whom the hair stands on end whether it
cover a believing or an unbelieving brow " ; and
Hazlitt's exquisite commentary on the real Hamlet
who is in each one of us who has " lost his mirth,
though why he know not " ; and Klein's delightful
ridicule of the German faddists ; and Victor Hugo's
subtle illustrative quotation from the Prometheus,
" That to pretend madness is the secret of the
wise." But I still have the temerity to hope that I
have been able to throw an added light on Hamlet's
difficulties by a more practical medium than meta-
physical speculation. I take my stand on the
prompt copy. If by the simple application of an
actor's experience, I have been able to make
Hamlet's attitude in this great play more plain
than it has hitherto appeared to many, my labours
in what I feel to be a good and a sane cause will
not have been in vain.

^54

Hamlet

AFTER-THOUGHT

In most versions of '' Hamlet'''' the final entry of
Fortinhras is omitted owing to the exigencies of time.
But much may be urged in favour of the retention of
this scene, which illustrates the ascendancy of physical
energy over ethical or philosophic inaction. In
Mr. Gordon Craig's production of Hamlet at the
Art Theatre in Moscow, which I witnessed recently,
I was deeply impressed by the picturesquely
valid presentation of this scene. Shakespeare him-
self frequently dwells on the worldly mastery of
matter over mind — witness the triumph of Boling-
broke over Richard II. Hamlet's conscience was
his downfall. And here a comparison and a re-
flection may be allowed me. Hamlet is the very
opposite of lago — of the man, that is to say, who
will swim with the stream of a callous utilitarianism
rather than struggle against it. Men of the type of
lago are morally colour-blind. They traffic with
intrigue. For them this mode of self- advancement
has no ugliness. The study of their lives is social
success ; popularity is their religion. The voice of
the people is louder than the voice of God. With
them there is no brainsickly misgiving as to the
means by which they attain their ends. They go
through life, slapping their fellow-men on the back,
everywhere making friends, taking care nowhere to
make enemies. They are the " jolly good fellows "

155

Hamlet

of a remunerative geniality. The social 'politician
does not waste time in asking himself, " Is this
right ? " Ke asks, ''Is this expedient ? " and he
" gets there,'''' as the Americans say. The man with
scruples cannot compete with him. Such an one,
understanding the world, may say to himself, in
weariness, " Is not life too short to circumvent intrigue
and chicanery ? To attain my ends, must I not
make terms with the Mammon of unrighteousness ? "
And he may go so far as to buckle on his armour to
join the noble army of " logr oilers,^' to enlist in the
ranks of the great Society of Mutual Protection.
It is by such unholy alliances that weak particles
make themselves strong. But the inner man, the
other sensitive, perhaps weaker self, will blush before
the inirror of his conscience ; in scorn he will fling
aside the armour and spring once more naked into
the arena. Cliques are the outcome of the instinct
of self-preservation among the weak.

Thus to combine is the shortest cut to fortune.
The world was not made for poets and idealists. We
are often reminded that to " play the game " is
necessary to success in life, and that to be a good
diplomatist is of greater importance than to " act
well your part.'''' But by such political shifts do
men forfeit more than they gain, for when they descend
into the arena to mingle with the pimps and panders
of party they lose their aloofness of mind, the birdseye
view of the philosopher.

156

Hamlet

The virginity of a soul cannot be recaptured.
As an obscurist observes :

Act well your part, there all the honour lies ;
Stoop to expediency and honour dies.
Many there are that in the race for fame
Lose the great cause to win the little game,
Who pandering to the town's decadent taste,
Barter the precious pearl for gawdy paste.
And leave upon the virgin page of Time
The venom'd trail of iridescent slime.

SOME INTERESTING FALLACIES
OF THE MODERN STAGE

SOME INTERESTING FALLACIES
OF THE MODERlSr STAGE

1891.

WHEN it was intimated to me that the Play-
goers' Club would be glad to devote a Sun-
day evening to the discussion of a subject which, 1
am given to understand, engrosses their attention
during the other six days of the week, my alacrity
to seize the opportunity of appearing in a new
character — that of a lecturer — was restrained by
the reflection that, in undertaking this task, I
might offend the susceptibilities of that class of
persons who make a point of never entering the
doors of a theatre. Only a few years ago, indeed,
such a proposal would have incurred the active
enmity of the united phalanx of Puritans and
Publicans — that unholy alliance which had so long
and so successfully opposed every attempt to banish
from our English Sunday the gloom which had come
L i6i

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

to be regarded as its national attribute. Any effort
to brighten the lives of those who toil six days in
the week, which had been made by the advocates
of Sweetness and Light, had been opposed by the
apostles of Brimstone and Brandy. Only a few
years ago any movement in the direction of what
is now regarded as a rational Sunday would have
been denounced as little short of a new gunpowder
plot to undermine the British Constitution, only to
be compared in its anarchy with an organised
conspiracy to overthrow the tyranny of the tall
hat. And I feel no little pride to think that in
casting me for so respectable a part as lecturer this
evening you will be able to knock one more nail
in the coffin which is being prepared for that gentle-
man in black beneath Avhose cassock lurks the
apron of the licensed victualler.

Any reform in this direction will only be brought
about by individual effort. From politicians we
can look for no active help, for both sides unite
in bowing their heads to that heathen god, the
mighty majority, and any movement to do away
with drunkenness by Act of Parliament would be
regarded as an interference with the vested inter-
ests of the licensed victualler. What indeed is
the better part of our modern Socialism but an
appeal to the State for protection against the
tyranny of Liberal institutions ?

I have sometimes noticed, in wandering through

162

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

the streets, evidences of sweetness and light in the
windows of the toihng poor, in the shape of a
consumptive geranium struggHng for supremacy
of sunHght with a sickly nasturtium ; and I have
daily been expecting the establishment of some
avenging society for banishing this strange anomaly,
this almost impertinent love of colour among the
working classes ; just as every effort is being
made to prevent the Sunday opening of picture
galleries, museums, and sacred concerts, which
bring into the windows of the souls of the struggling
millions those other flowers of the mind, and
harmony into the hearts of those " who never
sing, but die with all their music in them." I
cannot help thinking that these influences are
no less humanising than is the godless banging of
a " salvation " drum, an exercise which seems to
me but an expression of that strange creed, the
worship of the ugly, to epidemic outbursts of which
the history of this country is no stranger. And
it is this devotional cult — the worship of the ugly,
in its artistic aspect — that I propose to take as
the text of my lecture to-night.

There are two ways of dealing with abuses :
either to charge them down with the lance of
chivalry, or to bludgeon them with ridicule.
Whether we accept the knight-errantry of Don
Quixote, or the utilitarian philosophy of his
henchman, is a matter of temperament ; in a

163

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

public discussion, however, it is perhaps advis-
able to temper the ardour of the knight-errant
with the judicious worldliness of a Sancho Panza,
lest in taking our convictions too seriously we
should be laughed at for our pains ; lest the
clumsy heel of scorn should tread on the sensitive
toe of flippancy.

If for a moment I should be betrayed into a
seriousness, which is no way to behave in the
throes of a dying century, I hope that my rapier
will be baited with the button of banter, the pangs
of vivisection palliated by the chloroform of cour-
tesy, without which the unwritten laws which
govern a club would be a hollow mockery, and with-
out which the amenities of modern criticism might
degenerate into personalities ! Far be it from
me to throw into a peaceful and united camp of
criticism the apple of discord or the bone of con-
tention. Yet this army, united as it is in one
common cause, its holy crusade against the Actor-
Manager, is divided into creeds, the one side
championing the divine right, the undying laws
of an artistic monarchy, the other leaning towards
the republic of untrammelled modernity and
artistic emancipation. You are all familiar with
the old ballad " How happy could I be with either,
were t'other dear charmer away." Well, in that
attitude of perplexed hesitancy stands the lover
of the modern drama.

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

I will not call these rival creeds the old school
and the new, for it seems to me the Right knows
no school. Art is the same in all ages, and Truth
is its touchstone. It owes its birth to no canons ;
on the contrary, these are only discovered at its
autopsy. The Venus of Milo, which is ever new,
was evolved from no artistic rules — it dictated
them. Let us escape from the personal by calling
the rival champions Conservatives and Liberals.
I was greatly puzzled a short time ago, on being
asked by an energetic political agency to fill up
in a duly printed form my name, address, and
politics. After much self-communion, I arrived
at the conclusion that I was an Anti-Gladstonian
Socialist, and so I filled up the form. Well, that
is very much my attitude in this question of
dramatic politics.

And surely, whatever charge may be brought
against our English stage, it is not on the score
of its lack of catholicity that it can be attacked.
In matters of art we are the most cosmopolitan
of nations : here the art of every country is
received with open arms, whether it be expressed
in painting, in music, or in drama. Indeed, we
are, if anything, too prone to embrace the foreign
— in our cultivation of the exotic orchid, we are
apt to overlook our native rose. As exponents
of dramatic art, we are accustomed in London

i6s

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

to receive with hospitality the actors of Italy,
of France, of Germany, of America, of Holland
— ay, and of Japan. We have listened to the dove-
like cooings of a French Lady Macbeth, we have
been spellbound by the melodious roar of an
Italian Othello, we have admired the inspired
gutturals of a Germanic Caesar. In the matter of
stage literature we are no less cosmopolitan. We
have been dosed with adaptations of Palais Royal
farce, we have sipped the narcotic of Parisian
opera bouffe, we have nibbled the olive of French
comedy. We have recently turned our attention
to the Norwegian realistic drama — the drama of
perpetual night. We have watched with a curious
scientific interest the unfolding of that strangely
narrow, but none the less human, life which Ibsen
has laid bare with such unflinching power, with
such dexterous butchery. We have there learned
that the sordid life of the great civilised towns
can be outstripped in its ugliness by the primitive
bourgeoisie of a Scandinavian village. We have
held our nostrils while our gaze has been riveted
with wonderment and awe on the crawling brood
which the wand of this pitiless magician stirred
from the muddy depths, from the foetid pools,
of a sunless, joyless society. We have drunk
from the crisp spring of Goethe's Faust and Mar-
guerite. And more recently we have been taught
to look for the new light to a young Flemish writer.

1 66

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

Ever on the alert for a new saviour of the
drama, Mr. William Areher, from whom one is
not aecustomed to superlatives, has embraced
Maeterlinck with a fervour compared with which
the spiritual exaltation of the discoverer of a new
microbe is but a pale and sickly sentiment.

Maeterlinck's published works consist of three
pieces. Of these, Les Aveugles is a weird pot-
pourri, which cannot be defined by any terms
hitherto known to dramatic literature. As, how-
ever, this play contains thirteen characters, of which
twelve are blind, it would be superfluous to discuss
it as an acting drama, and so we may respectfully
relegate it to the bookshelves of literary curios.

Ulniruse, a one-act drama, seems to me as
striking in subject as it is original and forcible in
treatment, though its merit is perhaps rather
literary than dramatic. It might indeed be ren-
dered effective on the stage by a company of
sympathetic players, though the suspended agony
is perhaps too long drawn out to hold the spectator
spellbound throughout. It would be difficult to
imagine a more finely wrought-out scene than
that describing the intrusion of Death into the
sick-chamber. A young mother, who has just
passed through her confinement, is lying in the
adjoining room ; the anxious family is awaiting
the visit of a near relative ; the conversation is
carried on in a hushed tone :

167

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

The Father. You see nothing coming, Ursula?

The Daughter. Nothing, father.

The Father. Not in the avenue ? You can see the
avenue ?

The Daughter. Yes, father ; the moon is shining,
and I can see down the avenue right to the cypress
grove.

The Grandfather [wlio is blind]. And you see no
one, Ursula ?

The Daughter. No one, grandfather.

The Uncle. Is the night fine ?

The Daughter. Very fine ; do you hear the
nightingales ?

The Uncle. Yes, yes.

The Daughter. A breath of wind is stirring in the
avenue.

The Grandfather. A breath of wind in the avenue,
Ursula ?

The Daughter. Yes ; the trees are shivering a
little.

The Uncle. It is strange that my sister is not here
yet.

The Grandfather, I no longer hear the nightingales,
Ursula.

The Daughter. I think some one has entered the
garden, grandfather.

The Grandfather. Who is it ?

The Daughter. I cannot tell ; I see no one.

The Uncle. There is no one.

The Daughter. There must be some one in
the garden : the nightingales ceased singing sud-
denly.

The Uncle. But I hear no footsteps.

The Daughter. Some one must be passing by the
pond, for the swans are frightened.

1 68

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

The Father. You see no one ?

The Daughter. No one, father.

The Father. Yet the pond must be in the moon-
light.

The Daughter. Yes ; I can see that the swans are
frightened.

The Uncle. I am sure it is my sister that has
frightened them. She must have come in by the
wicket-gate.

The Father. I cannot understand why the dogs do
not bark.

The Daughter. I see the watch-dog crouched in
the inmost corner of his kennel. The swans are flying
towards the other bank.

The Uncle. Tlicy are afraid of my sister. Let me
see. [He calls.] Sister 1 sister I Is it you ?

[No one answers.

The Daughter. I am sure some one has entered the
garden. You will see.

The Uncle. But she would answer me !

The Grandfather. Are not the nightingales be-
ginning to sing again, Ursula ?

The Daughter. I cannot hear one, even in the
distance.

The Grandfather. Yet there is no noise to disturb
them.

The Father. The night is silent as death.

The Grandfather. It must have been some
stranger that frightened them ; if it had been one of
the family they would not have ceased singing.

The Daughter. I see one on the great weeping
willow. He has flown away I

* * * * *

[Suddenly the sound of the sharpening of a scythe is heard. ]
The Grandfather [starting]. Oh 1

169

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

The Uncle, Ursula, what is that ?

The Daughter. I cannot tell ; I think it is the
gardener. I do not see clearly ; he is in the shadow
of the house.

The Father. It is the gardener going to mow the
grass.

The Uncle. Does he mow in the dark ?

The Father. Is not to-morrow Sunday ? Yes, I
noticed that the grass around the house was very long.

The Grandfather. His scythe seems to make such
a noise

The Daughter. He is moving close to the house.

The Grandfather. Do you see him, Ursula ?

The Daughter. No, grandfather ; he is in the
shadow.

The Grandfather. I am afraid he will awaken
my daughter.

The Uncle. We can scarcely hear him at all.

The Grandfather. I hear him as though he were
mowing in the house.

The intruder was Death. — Here was a gem, a
vivid flash of that imagination which is the most
precious ingredient in a work of art. A dramatic
author, however, cannot claim to be judged by
his one-act efforts ; it is his more ambitious
works by which he must stand or fall. Of Maeter-
linck's works the most ambitious is a five-act
tragedy called La Princesse Maleine, and it is
with this work that I propose to deal chiefly in
endeavouring to arrive at an estimate of this
author's claims to rank with the highest dramatists.

It should be remembered that this work has

170

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

been described by M. Mirbcau, Maeterlinck's
panegyrist, as containing " things more beautiful
than the most beautiful things in Shakespeare."
One cannot escape the reflection that M. Mirbeau
had either not read his Shakespeare, or that he had
not read his Maeterlinck. His eulogy of Maeter-
linck seems to me indeed a truly Boulevardian
conception of greatness. If there be a resemblance
between the living and the dead, it seems to me
that Maeterlinck is a great deal more like Shake-
speare than Shakespeare is like Maeterlinck.

In Act i. of Princesse Maleine it is shown how
old Hjalmar (king of one part of Holland) has
fallen in love with the dethroned Queen Anne of
Jutland (a kind of Lady Macbeth). The Princess
Maleine (an Ophelia-like maiden) is the daughter of
Marcellus (king of another part of Holland), and
she in turn is in love with young Hjalmar (son of
the old king). To their union, however, Marcellus
is strongly opposed, owing to a feud between him-
self and King Hjalmar. A war ensues between
the two kings. Marcellus is killed, and the sur-
rounding villages are in flames. Meantime (we
are still in Act i.), young Hjalmar has become
betrothed, through the designs of the wicked Queen
Anne, to that lady's daughter, Uglyane.

In Act ii. Maleine is wandering with her attendant
(like another Rosalind) in the forest, in search of
Hjalmar 's home. The ladies meet with peasants,

171

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

and one of these (a cowherd, and evidently no gentle-
man) casually announces his intention of bathing.
The following conversation takes place :

Peasant. I am going to bathe.

Nurse. To bathe ?

Peasant. Yes ; I am going to undress here.

Nurse. Before us ?

Peasant. Yes.

Nurse [to MaleineI. Come away.

This original situation is here interrupted by
the entrance of Prince Hjalmar. It is the eve of
his nuptials with Uglyane ; he (Hjalmar) does not
recognise Maleine, but his companion suggests that
she would be a good attendant to Uglyane. We
subsequently find Maleine waiting upon Uglyane
in this capacity. After constant changes of
scenery, we are in a park, where Prince Hjalmar
has an appointment to meet Uglyane, but Maleine
goes in her stead, Hjalmar in the darkness imagining
her to be his betrothed. Then ensues a love scene.

The following is a literal translation of one
passage :

Maleine. I am frightened.

Hjalmar. But we are in the park.

Maleine. Are there walls round the park ?

Hjalmar. Yes, there are walls round the park, and
moats.

Maleine. And no one can enter ?

Hjalmar. No ; but many strange things enter all
the same.

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

Maleine. My nose is bleeding I

Hjalmar. Your nose is bleeding ?

Maleine. Yes ; where is my handkerchief ?

Hjalmar. Let us go to the basin.

Maleine. Oh I my dress is saturated ^vith blood.

Hjalmar. Uglyane I Uglyane 1 Has it stop])ed ?

Maleine. Yes. [A silence.

To attempt to criticise a passage so sublime in its
banality would be sacrilege. There it must stand,
a monument to itself, silencing the commentator,
and paralysing the uplifted hand of the iconoclast.
The nose-bleeding to which Maeterlinck's heroine
is addicted is indeed puzzling to the primitive
observer of nature.

The spectator is at once on the alert. Some
dramatic development will surely be the outcome
of this novel symptom of love. If, for instance,
the hero were by these means to track the object
of his affections to some lonely spot to which she
had been lured by the villain, the expedient of the
bleeding nose might not only be commended for its
daring, but would have the additional recommenda-
tion of sanity. But it is no such vulgar purpose
which our latter-day dramatist has in view ; he
introduces the incident purely for its own sake,
and by way of making his heroine consistent in
this expression of emotion, the author subjects
her, in her death struggles, to the same symptoms,
regardless of the physical limitations of his actress.
But there is another habit to which Maeter-

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

linck's characters appear to be addicted with a
starthng unanimity. They will talk about the
weather — indeed, amongst the creations of this
author meteorological observations appear to be
a very general topic of conversation.

But to return to the play. In Act iii. Hjalmar
appears to be again betrothed to Maleine, but the
wicked Queen Anne has a perfect passion for
poisoning, and we feel that Maleine is not safe.
Old King Hjalmar (a sort of unscrupulous King
Lear) is beginning to feel uncomfortable at the
multitude of crimes into which he is plunged by
his designing guest, whose poisoning propensities
cause him no little anxietv.

In Act iv. we find that preparations are on
foot for the nuptials of Prince Hjalmar and Maleine,
and then ensues a scene in which the King and
Queen determine to strangle her, the poisoning
having failed. There are fine dramatic touches
here. The wind is howling, the hail is beating
in at the window, while the Queen strangles poor
Maleine ; at the supreme moment, the grinning
face of the Court fool appears at the open window.
The King promptly kills this witness of the crime,
and the fool falls into the moat below, his dying
gurglings being heard through the window. The
King is in an agony of terror ; Maleine's dog is
scratching at the door ; then nuns are heard chant-
ing a Latin hymn, but they pass away into the

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

distance. A knocking is heard at the locked door
— it is the nurse's voice ; presently she is joined
by Hjalmar. The King and Queen escape from
the room by another door, and Hjalmar and the
nurse are left outside.

In Act V. the elements play the chief role. The
old King is dying, and is on the verge of madness.
Hjalmar and the nurse discover that Maleinc is
killed, and seeing the dead fool outside, they imagine
that he has done the deed. The King, however,
confesses that he and the Queen are the murderers.
Hjalmar stabs the Queen, and then kills himself.
The King, left behind, demented, asks for salad.
He then goes out, leaning on the nurse. This
practically ends the play. All the persons leave
the stage, with the exception of the seven nuns,
who chant a miserere while they place the bodies
on the bed. The bells leave off tolling ; the night-
ingales are heard ; a cock perches at the open
window and crows, while the curtain falls. Difficult
as it would be to realise to the full the effect of
these stage instructions, owing to the limited
adaptability of a barn-door fowl to the exigencies
of the stage, there is no doubt that the closing
scenes breathe a dramatic instinct ; indeed, through-
out the play we are reminded of this quality. I
do not maintain that M. Maeterlinck's work is
lacking in fine moments, but that he abounds in
very bad quarters of an hour.

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

It would indeed be difficult to excel the pictur-
esqueness of certain passages in this play. And
it is this quality of picturesqueness which to my
mind distinguishes the Belgian author. Our
author, however, forgets that the picturesque
is not the end and aim of dramatic art, but rather
the vehicle to be employed towards that end.
Cleverness of technique is too often regarded as
the highest aim of art. The great thought, the
noble purpose, the poetic thrill, are, according to
the fashionable artistic cant, pooh-poohed, to
the glorification of cleverness of execution. Thus
the pictures of a great imaginative artist are often
glibly condemned by those who prefer a cocotte
by Van Beers to a Madonna by Watts.

The stage demands a wider sweep of life, a
larger range of observation than is suspected
by the literary pedant. The drama in neutral
tints is an anomaly, and will be to the end of
time.

It is maintained by litterateurs that the drama
is but an offshoot of literature. It might be argued
with equal plausibility that literature is an offshoot
of the drama. The drama is the most compre-
hensive of the arts, for it enlists all the other arts
in its service — the art of letters, of painting, of
dancing, of music, of sculpture, and — the art of
advertising. Social politics have almost become

176

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

a necessity of existence. In its most triumphant
moments advertising may be defined as the art
of imposing on others what you have ceased to
believe yourself. It is no secret that there are
moments in the career of most actor-managers — •
ay, even of author-managers — when advertisement
helps art over the stile. In a restless paragraphic
age, when the silent worker often breaks his
heart, let no one look with contempt on this great
propelling force ; but a force which, like electricity
itself, kills in the misapplication. Nor must it be
supposed that this art is one of entirely modern
growth. There exists a picture of an eminent
actor of the last century — published, it is said,
during his lifetime — in which he is represented as
being wafted by two trumpeting angels to heaven,
where Shakespeare, humbly bowing, receives him
with doffed hat and " I-hope-I-don't-intrude "
expression. Let no man call himself great until
he has corrected the proof-sheets of his own
obituary notices.

As to this cry for a literary drama, by all means
let the drama be literary, but first let it be dramatic.
The drama has a literature of its own. Mere fine
writing cannot make a good play. It cannot be
denied that a certain kind of play has long held the
boards which is not intellectual, and which cannot
in any sense claim to be literary. This kind of play
is fast disappearing from our stage, and its scattered
M 177

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

remnants will in all probability entirely vanish
before the march of free education. People go to
the theatre primarily to see play-acting, and the
first requirement of a play is that it shall be actable
— that it shall, in fact, be dramatic. Many an
unliterary play has been saved by good acting, but
no bad acting can be saved by good literature. It
may be frankly admitted that many an indifferent
work has met with success. But when I hear all
this outcry against those in ofhce by those who are
not, I cheerfully reply : " Where is the play pro-
duced in recent years which has failed from being
too good ? Where is the play which has failed
because it was good literature ? " There have, of
course, been plays of fine literary flavour which
have given their author many months of fruitless
toil ; but if we look carefully we shall find the
little rift somewhere, just as the most skilful bell-
founder may find his bell cracked and his music
mute. In such plays we find the sympathy mis-
placed ; the centre of gravity has somehow been
dislodged. And it is precisely this nice adjustment
of sympathy, this instinctive dramatic poise, this
sublime humour, which in the dramatist we call
genius. A microscopic examination may reveal
the most perfect workmanship — the most accurate
drawing. But stand back from the picture, subject
it to the larger perspective of the stage, the work
fails to satisfy, its defects become apparent — the

178

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

heart-beats of a multitude have felt its unhumanity.
The play was literary — it was not dramatic. Hail
at it as you will, the first merit of a play is that it
shall satisfy the artistic conscience of an audience.
By the blessed re-adjustment of the laws of copy-
right there still remains this comfort to a dis-
appointed author, he can print his play, he can
send it to his friends, and he can append a foot-
note to the effect that it was too good for the
public. Does an audience disenjoy The School for
Scandal because it is literary ? No ; but that
wondrous comedy would not have had its abiding
hold over each succeeding generation had it not
possessed a story which appealed to the heart —
a plot that engaged the sympathies of the specta-
tors. It is a matter for congratulation, for which
the dramatic Liberals, or advanced school, are in no
small measure responsible, that nowadays plays are
produced and listened to with respect which only
a few years ago it would have been little short of
madness to put upon the stage. The drama
covers a wider area of life. W. S. Gilbert's young
lady of fifteen is growing up.

What I maintain is, that the work of exotic
writers will not hold a permanent place upon our
stage, for, interesting though it be, it can only be
a transient phase. It cannot be expected to take
its place as a permanent and native gro^vth. It
serves, however, as an admirable manure for the

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

future, a dunghill from which many a fair flower of
the drama may bloom.

Far be it from me to depreciate the admirable
influence which the exploitation of foreign works
has exercised, and will continue to exercise, over
our own theatre. Far be it from me to belittle
the service which certain writers have rendered our
contemporary stage in clamouring for a wider field
of action, for a more realistic dramatic literature.
We should applaud their enthusiasm, even if we
think it exaggerated and at times misplaced.

Nor should we forget to-day the work of those
other enthusiasts who stood by the drama in its
period of storm and stress, who upheld its dignity,
and untiringly advocated its claims to take a high
place among the arts. To these our dramatists owe
no small debt of gratitude, while the beneficial
influence they exercised over the acting of our
time is equally not to be forgotten. Who shall
deny the impetus which histrionic art received from
them, not only by public encouragement, but no
less by unflinching and persistent criticism ? At a
time of artistic lethargy into which our stage had
fallen, it was roused into healthy action by the
rivalry with foreign actors, whose superiority was
proclaimed persistently by these writers. In our
hurry to upset what we consider the canons of
convention, let us beware lest we set up the canons
of anarchy.

i8o

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

For my own part I view these heated discus-
sions with satisfaction. I regard these volcanic
mutterings as a sign of latent fire. It is only by
strife that great things are accomplished. For in
our lesser world, as in the larger universe, " all
subsists by elemental strife, and passions are the
elements of life."

Nor is it from want of recruits that the drama
can be said to be languishing. One of the most
interesting hallucinations to which the human
species of both sexes is prone, is the conviction that
anyone can act and that everyone can wTite a play.
That is a fallacy. A short time ago I received a
letter informing me that the writer was a house
decorator by trade, but that as circumstances over
which he had no control had recently subjected
him to epileptic fits, he would be glad to take a
part in my next production. He added that he
had a strong taste for the literary drama, of
which indeed he had several samples on hand.
The letter concluded thus : " To prove to you
that I am not lacking in dramatic instinct, I enclose
a newspaper cutting, which please return." Under-
lined in red ink I read these words : " The prisoner,
who denied the assault, conducted his own case,
and defended himself in a somewhat dramatic

manner.'^

It is no longer the fashion for the cultivated and

i8i

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

fastidious to hold aloof from the theatre, and
" quite superior persons " do not deny the soft
impeachment of flirting with the Muse. Thanks,
indeed, to the platonic but enervating blandish-
ments of dilettante patrons of the stage, the drama
runs the danger of being refined away until it
reaches its apex in a vanishing point.

There is a certain kind of literary dandy who
would banish all that is healthy, all that is beautiful
from the stage, and substitute in their place that
kind of art which is the outcome of an over-sated
civilisation, an art which finds a parallel expression
in those weirdly stomachic examples of Japanese
art which leer at us through the shop windows of
Regent Street. It is not from the ranks of these
that the drama will be vitalised. These lisping
Rabelaisians, mistaking indecency for passion, lash
themselves into a state of impotent frenzy, and,
with an ardour which is almost alcoholic, sip their
inspiration from the pellucid depths of a lemon-
squash.

If it be indeed the function of art to give us
nature in all its crudeness, the accidental truth of
the reporter rather than the greater truth of the
poet, then it is obvious that the theatre is but an
excrescence on our social system. For we can find
our romances free of charge in the law courts, we
can look for our love stories in the columns of the
Illustralcd Police News, for our philosophy in the

182

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

gutter, for our heroism in a street brawl, and we
can exereise our tragic emotions in the precincts of
the Morgue or in the wards of a hospital. If I may
take as an illustration a play that was recently
produced, it seemed to me that Therese Raquin was
the work of an impassioned photographer rather
than that of an imaginative artist. I confess to
being attracted by this morbid play, but how much
wider would have been the sphere of its influence
if with the woof of realism the golden thread of
poetic imagination had been intertwined ! I believe
that such works serve their purpose in literature, as
recording the impressions of a certain society on
the mind of a great writer. I deny that the stage
is the most suitable vehicle for their exhibition.
This striking drama is a modernised version of
Macbeth. But mark the difference of treatment.
In the one the highest emotions are stirred ; in the
other we are assisting at a post-mortem examina-
tion. One man will paint blood trickling down
marble steps in such a way as to make one exclaim
" Ah ! " Another in such a way as to make one
exclaim " Ugh ! "

We have heard a good deal about an Independent
Theatre, which was established, I understand, for
the purpose of sweeping from the stage that usurp-
ing intruder the actor-manager, to whose baneful
and withering influence have been attributed all

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

the ills which dramatic flesh is heir to. What has
been the outcome of this agitation ? What has
become of the maternal Muse, so pregnant in
promise, so abortive in performance ? What has
been the output of this magnificent machinery ?
In his mind's eye the patentee of this artistic
Utopia saw the little dramatic fledglings nestling
fondly round their parent incubator. Everything
was perfect — only the eggs were missing ; or at
least they were what the late Mr. Middlewick used
to call " shop 'uns." An ingenious analyst will
be able to produce an oval-shaped something which
shall contain all the chemical properties of an egg.
He may sit on his egg till Doomsday, but he will
never hatch it.

Again, we heard lately of the admirable in-
tentions of a London manager, who announced
his policy of setting aside one evening in the week
for productions other than the piece then running.
By these means the manager thought that he
would be able to produce the works of hitherto
unknown authors. But what was the result ?
Somehow the scheme did not work. True it is
that several interesting revivals took place, and
one piece, the merits and demerits of which were
somewhat hotly discussed over the prostrate body
of the manager, was produced. But the scheme
did not meet with much encouragement from the
press, who promptly satirised it as quixotic, and

184

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

dubbed these special evenings " Unpopular Mon-
days." I am told that the manager diplomatically-
attributed the cessation of this ambitious enter-
prise to failing health. Strange that such a " very
fiery particle should let itself be snuffed out by an
article ! "

It would be idle to deny that the system of long
runs is, in some of its aspects, detrimental to the
best interests of art ; though we must not forget,
even on this point, that the assurance of a sustained
run has enabled both manager and actor to bestow
upon their work a measure of care and refinement
which is not possible under the conditions of a
constantly shifting programme. A manager is,
alas ! bound to keep one eye on his exchequer,
and the exchequer demands that a successful play
shall run its course. It happens sometimes that,
in his attempt to evade the quicksands of the
Bankruptcy Court, the manager perishes in the
stagnant waters of commercialism. It is obvious
that it is desirable that a manager should be freed
from these sordid considerations, and I believe that
in almost every country but England the theatres
are State-subventioned. It is an open ques-
tion, however, in a country in which individ-
ualism in all departments has taken strong root,
and where State encouragement or interference is
looked upon askance — whether a national or sub-
sidised theatre would be for the ultimate benefit

185

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

of the community. Personally, I incline to the
belief that any drawbacks of a subsidised system
would be greatly outweighed by its benefits.
It must be confessed, on the other hand, that
experiences in France and other countries do not
tend to show that the State-subsidised theatres
are in touch with the age ; indeed, the State
machinery is liable to have grown somewhat
rusty.

In the absence of conditions which are not
likely to prevail here, to whom, then, can we turn
for the advance of those interests which all of us
have at heart ? It seems to be taken for granted
that the artist is the one person who is indifferent
to the claims of his art. With a lofty disregard of
history, certain writers are never tired of dinning
into the ears of the public this remarkable paradox,
hallowed only by print. It must be confessed that
the public on their part show no inclination to
prefer the claims of the commercial or the literary-
scientific manager, who are patiently waiting their
turn, while the storm rages fiercely round the
actor-manager, who stands amid it all, immovable
as the Pyramids, as imperturbable as a perennial
" Aunt Sally."

We are told by some that the drama is mori-
bund. We are told that enthusiasm is dead, and
artistic enterprise an affair of £ s. d. I am so

i86

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

bold as to contend that there never was a time
when our art exercised a greater sway over the
pubhc ; there never was a time when literature
devoted itself with greater zeal to its discussion ;
there never was a time of greater artistic striving
than the present. And I am yet bolder in affirming
that the best work which has been done for our
art in the past has been done by men in my own
position. If it is well to be modest about oneself,
it is permitted to be proud of one's comrades ;
and I confidently maintain, in asking you to
glance back at the record of the past, that it is
the workers in our own, as in all other arts, who
have at all times upheld its best interests, its fair
fame, its highest ideals. Not to go farther back,
the memory of many who are here to-night will
supply the names of those who have been illustrious
in the advancement of our art during the last fifty
years. Among such names are those of William
Charles Macready, Charles Kean, Phelps, Henry
Irving, Bancroft, and John Hare. And I am still
so bold as to predict that the examples set by these
men will be followed by their successors in art. If
their enthusiasm lag, then let others come on and
take up the standard ; the fittest will survive.
The field is open to all, for happily art knows
no vested interests. It is but beating the air to
rail at the star-system, for that system is based
upon a law of nature — the happy inequality of

187

Fallacies of the Modern Stage

man. Is not all humanity run upon the star-
system ?

I maintain that it is a fallacy to suppose that
those eternal conditions which have governed art
can be upset, any more than can those which
have governed nature. So long as men are men
and women are women, so long will they look to
art to hold up to them that flattering mirror in
which they can see themselves idealised. In an
age when faith is tinged with philosophic doubt,
when love is regarded as but a spasm of the nervous
system, and joy itself but as the refrain of a music-
hall song, I believe that it is still the function
of art to give us light rather than darkness. Its
teaching should not be to taunt us with our
descent from the monkeys, but rather to remind
us of our affinity with the angels. Its mission is
not to lead us through the fogs of doubt into the
bogs of despair, but rather to point, even in the
twilight of a waning century, to the greater light
beyond.

AFTER-THOUGHT

We live to learn and learn to live.
It would he a pity if age did riot ripen judgment
and broaden sympathy. The mind even of an

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Fallacies of the Modern Stage

actor-manager progresses, though he may hajily
retain an undiminished faculty of provoking the
critics, as must all vital art. Mediocrity makes us
wondrous kind !

This essay seems to me now to contain certain
harshnesses of expression in regard to a writer whose
later work inspires a whole-hearted admiration. Or
is it that the genius of Maeterlinck has emerged from
its tentative endeavour into a larger area of accom-
plishment, and soared into a wider realm of imagina-
tion ? Be that as it may, I am content to let the
written word stand, and I cannot do better than
shelter myself behind the dictum of an eminent modern
writer :

" Not that I agree with everything that I have
said in this essay — there is much with which I
entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an
artistic standpoint, and in (Esthetic criticism attitude
is everything.''''

THE HUMANITY OF
SHAKESPEARE

THE HUMANITYof SHAKESPEARE

1904.

T IMAGINATION, observation, poetry, passion,
•^ humour — all these are Shakespeare's in supreme
degree — we are dazed as we look at them, rising
like mountains from the common ground ; but the
highest peak of all, that which is the first to be
touched by the morning sun and the last to retain
its setting glory, is his radiant humanity. His is
the supreme gift of viewing human nature from
the heights, of discerning the reality of things
below, and of dealing with them in that serene
spirit of tolerance which is the attribute only of
the great few — the master-poets of the world
have drunk deep from that Olympian spring.

Shakespeare never strikes the note of a self-
conscious moralist — indeed, it is often difficult to
determine where his sympathies are. In this
impersonality — this impartiality of mind — he stands
N 193

The Humanity of Shakespeare

almost apart. He never holds a brief for his
characters, labelling this one good and that one
bad, this one penny plain, and that one twopence
coloured ; he is the judge, not the advocate,
allowing each character to develop his own case,
leaving the jury of mankind to draw their con-
clusions. He dwells for the time being in the
minds of the men he is portraying, revealing the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
of their natures — extenuating nothing, nor setting
down aught in malice. His heroes have their
weaknesses — his weak men their heroisms. He
does not hesitate to afflict the noble character of
the Moor with a foolish and unreasoning jealousy
— he appears even to have a sort of intellectual
sympathy with the dastard lago. Like Rem-
brandt, he is the supreme artist who will paint
with equal zest the front of Jove himself or the
carcase of a bullock. He does not scruple to
afflict the beautiful nature of Hamlet with unmanly
hesitancy, with a corroding and disintegrating
philosophy which drives that versatile prince to
the admission that " There is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so." It was this
little rift within the frail and delicate lute of
Hamlet's character which was fated to make his
music mute. We cannot all be given the sturdy
virtues of the trombone. On the other hand, he
is not only serenely tolerant of, but he even appears

194

The Humanity of Shakespeare

to regard with a feeling akin to affection, the con-
cave character of Falstaff ; and assuredly no two
characters could be more opposite than arc those
of the sweet Prince and that incarnation of wallow-
ing selfishness, that immortal creation of the poet's
passionate humour, the fat knight. How opposite
arc their points of view of life and death, and of
honour ! And yet no one but he who wrote the
" To be or not to be " speech, or that other speech
on honour in Hamlet, could have given us Falstaff's
speech on honour in Henry IV. Listen to the
words of Hamlet:

" How all occasions do hiform against me,
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast — no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter 'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, — I do not know
Why yet I live to say ' This thing's to do.'
*****

.... Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument.

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

WTien honour's at the stake.

....01 from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth 1 "

195

The Humanity of Shakespeare

Turn to the speech of Falstaff before the
battle —

Falstaff : Hal, if thou see me down in the battle, and
bestride me, so ; 'tis a point of friendship.

Prince : Nothing but a colossus can do thee that
friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.

Falstaff: I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all
well.

Prince: Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit.]

Falstaff : 'Tis not due yet ; I would be loth to pay
him before his day. What need I be so forward with him
that calls not on me ? Well, 'tis no matter ; honour
pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off
when I come on ? How then ? Can honour set-to a leg ?
No. Or an arm ? No. Or take away the grief of a
wound ? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then ?
No. What is honour ? A word. What is that word
honour ? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it ?
He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it ? No.
Doth he hear it ? No. Is it insensible, then ? Yea,
to the dead. But will it live with the living ? No.
Why ? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll
none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon — and so ends
my catechism.

Turn to Marc Antony in Julius Ccesar. How
serenely relentless was his observation of humanity
in dealing with this motley crowd ! Marc Antony
has the complex nature of a man, and is not
merely a stage figure. Though a hero he does not
disdain to stoop to subterfuge to gain his end, and
plays upon the unwashed mob as a great composer
sways and dominates, flatters and cajoles, bullies

196

The Humanity of Shakespeare

and inspires an orchestra. Brutus, too, is he a
hero ? No — though noble in utterance, he is the
self-deceiving politician. There have been many
such, who, to gain their ends, persuade themselves
that their means are honest — that they themselves
are sincere. Brutus kills Caesar — for the good of
the cause, from his point of view. Antony revenges
his death — for the good of the cause, from his
point of view. Shakespeare remains the apologist
of both. Was Caisar right ? Was Brutus right ?
Was Cassius right ? Was Marc Antony right ?
Where is Shakespeare's sympathy ? Everywhere
— nowhere — he holds the scales of justice, mys-
terious, elusive, impartial, inscrutable, seeing " with
equal eye as God of all, a hero perish or a sparrow
fall."

Take Shylock. Most people appear to think
that Shylock must either be a demon or a saviour.
He is, in truth, a mixture of both — the man — the
Jew ! But mark the serene impartiality where-
with Shakespeare sits in judgment on the soul of
Shylock ! He presents in him the vices as well as
the virtues of his race. Domesticity is one of the
Hebraic virtues. The love of his daughter com-
mends him to our sympathies — anon his vengeful
and cruel nature commands our censure. It is,
therefore, ridiculous to present Shylock as a merely
sympathetic character. Of course, the culmina-
tion of suffering creates sympathy with any man,

197

The Humanity of Shakespeare

and, while laughing at his pretensions, we weep
at his griefs. There can be no doubt that at the
time Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice
the Jews were not regarded with high favour,
and Shylock's first speech shows him informed
by the spirit of revenge. I do not deny that
Shylock had just cause to be angry, and it has
been said that revenge is a primitive form of
justice. But just when we begin to think that
Shylock is becoming the martyr-hero of the play,
and that all our sympathies are meant for him,
Shakespeare, the altruist, enters upon the scene,
and gives us the immortal speech on the quality
of mercy, which, bursting the walls of the narrow
court, preaches to humanity the eternal message
of Christian forgiveness. Here is put in consum-
mate fashion the tragedy of a people's oppression ;
then the whole ancient Jewish wisdom is shattered,
flung down, a thing outworn, rent to pieces by the
mightier wisdom of the greatest of all the Jews.

Glance at Richard II. He is as many-sided as
the other great creations of the poet. What is to
be said of that strange mixture of power and
feebleness, of nobility and apathy, of courage and
irresolution, of indolence and energy ? The poet
gives us the clue to the enigma in his presentation
of the character of this spoilt child of fortune,
and informs us more by the enlightening magic
of his genius than does the historian by a record of

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The Humanity of Shakespeare

dry facts. It may well be imagined that the
tragic figure of Richard served the poet as a model
for the development of the character of Hamlet,
with whom the ill-fated King has many points
of resemblance. In both instances we have the
spectacle of a young prince thrown into surround-
ings of barbarism and corruption, both incapable
of grappling with the stern facts of life. In each
case the idealist succumbs to the materialist — the
man of action. Each in his way laments the
futility of his existence. Hamlet on the immor-
tality of his soul, Richard on the divine rights
of kings — each seems to breathe that sad and
fantastic irony which is so dominant a note in the
poet's mind.

In the beginning of the play, when the two
appellants come before him, Richard exhibits that
princely confidence which had already enabled him
to quell the followers of Wat Tyler, and to raise
in his people those high hopes for a great future
which were never to be realised. Again, in the
lists at Coventry, when he stops the intended
fight, and there and then banishes both com-
batants, he comes forth as a strong, quick, and
resourceful statesman. But, later, at the bedside
of his dying uncle his bearing is harsh and unfeel-
ing, completely overshadowing the good qualities
he had shown before. Furthermore, on the return
of Bolingbroke a few months afterwards, when the

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The Humanity of Shakespeare

unhappy king is deserted by his subjects, Shake-
speare reveals him in the throes of an exaggerated
and over-indulgent self-pity. The passionate, way-
ward artistic nature that before made him over-
bearing and imperious, turns him now into an
effeminate and self-compassionate creature. There
are occasional rallies of wit and spirit, but the poet
shows them as mere flickers flaming up out of the
darkness of his despair. Then, just as we are feel-
ing contempt for the man, the humanity of Shake-
speare bursts through again, and, in the scene of
the surrender of his crown, compels us to acknow-
ledge in this complex character a distinct noble-
ness and pathos — this, possibly, to prepare us for
the death of Richard in prison, where we are
given a remnant of his old bearing, though tempered
by repentance and resignation.

Take again the development of the characters
of King Lear, of Macbeth, and of King John.
None of these is a hero in the conventional sense
of the word. In themselves, they do not call forth
our sympathies. It is their humanity thrown
athwart the tragic incidents of their lives which
gradually awakens in us emotions culminating in
a climactic agony of grief.

Let us now pass from the contemplation of
Shakespeare's work to a consideration of the treat-
ment which his interpreters should devote to that

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The Humanity of Shakespeare

work in order to bring home to the spectator the
true meaning of the poet. And here it is the
actor's highest aim to give that note of humanity
which makes the whole world kin.

It is the fashion to say that the mounting of
Shakespeare is the main consideration the modern
actor-manajzer has in view. That is all nonsense.
These are the outward flourishes and not the
essentials. It was once thought necessary that
the actor should put on stilts in order to reach
the Shakespearian height. No author demands a
more natural, a more sincere, a more human treat-
ment at the hands of the actor than does Shake-
speare. He, being the most modern of writers,
demands the most modern treatment. He is not
of yesterday nor to-day — he is of yesterday and
to-day and to-morrow and the day after to-
morrow. The actor's own humanity — that is the
all-important question. How far is he to allow
that to be infused with the character he is called
upon to represent ? Certain it is that w^hilst the
actor's outer self-suppression is amongst the most
essential factors of success in his art, so also are
his own individuality, his own personality, his
own humanity all-important.

You cannot imagine a characterless person
playing the great characters of Shakespeare. You
say, " Oh, it doesn't matter — Shakespeare has
taken care of all that." Yes, but it requires

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The Humanity of Shakespeare

individuality to interpret individuality — power,
force, character, to realise the creations of the
master brain. Nothing else than the actor's
individuality will make the humanity of these
characters stand out sharp and clear from the
mass of humanities grouped about it and behind it.

I w^as once walking along the sea-shore of a
great northern city at close of day, and, casting
my eyes inland, I was impressed by the superb
manner in which the splendid granite towers and
spires outlined themselves clear-cut against the
crimson of the sunset sky. Behind them stood a
mass of grey, indeterminate masonry, vague and
menacing, pallid and indistinguishable ; but they
themselves, those lofty spires tapering into the
azure of heaven, those embattled towers square
and massive, how superbly they reared themselves
aloft and above the surging world beneath them !
So, I thought to myself, is it with the great char-
acters of Shakespeare. They are outlined for all
time, they stand as memorials of humanity for
ever. But how is the actor to give life to these
creations ? How infuse into them the vitality by
which only they can be brought into touch with
the present day ? And the answer surely is, that
he must infuse them with his own individuality.
Initiative — like " Mesopotamia " — is a blessed
word in the hands of the discreet man.

Consider what an impossible condition of

202

The Humanity of Shakespeare

things it would be if everybody played Hamlet,
Macbeth, Mai vol io, or Shylock on the same pattern
— Smith playing it like Robinson, and Brown like
both of them. Or picture to yourselves how
absurd it would be if a man played all those four
characters in the same way, the words only denot-
ing the difference. No ; an actor, if he is to be
in any way understood or make Iiis character
understood, must infuse into his reading of Hamlet,
Macbeth, Malvolio, or Shylock his own humanity,
his own individuality, his own personality ; for it
is his personality that accentuates, that brings
out the personality of the character he is por-
traying. And the more widely that three or
four different actors of strong character differ in
their respective readings of a part, the more is it
a proof of its own inherent humanness, the more
is it obvious that it is possessed of a wide human
nature. As to how far he is to bring his own
humanity to bear upon that of Shakespeare is
a matter that can be safely left to the wit and
discretion of an originally-minded man. After
all, the same applies to literature. A good writer
always puts a great deal of himself into his
varied characters — for, be sure of this, you can-
not guess at human nature. To make a mark
upon the literature of your day, or of any day,
you can only write from your own personal experi-
ence, observation, or instinct ; and the greatest

203

The Humanity of Shakespeare

of these is instinct, for instinct is the knowledge
suppUed by heredity. Some men are born edu-
cated— some are not. It is not less so with the
actor. He cannot take cock-shies at humanity.
Human nature is, after all, the most modern thing
we know, and it is the most ancient. But one
thing is certain — it is never outworn, never out
of the fashion. Empires and principalities, nations
and institutions fade away ; but humanity remains
to-day exactly as it was, in all essentials, a hundred
thousand years ago — as it will be a hundred
thousand years hence. Do you know that wonder-
ful crouching figure in the British Museum, the
Stone-Age man, discovered in Egypt — a man who
lived any time between twenty and fifty thousand
years ago ? You see his bones, his muscles, even
the very hair of his face. He seems so long ago,
and yet he is, after all, one of ourselves. He might
have been Hamlet, or Napoleon, or Macbeth, or
Herbert Spencer. He is eternal ; and they are
eternal, for humanity is eternal. Human nature
is informed by the same passions, the same joys,
the same griefs, the same humour — and in pro-
portion as the interpreter informs his conceptions
of Shakespeare with his own humanity, so will
his work stand out clear and vivid upon the stage.
How vast is the story of humanity writ in the
brain of the greatest thinker mankind has ever
produced. By the light of the wide tolerance of

204

The Humanity of Shakespeare

his spacious day, we feel how thin are the barriers
of caste, how puny are our social bickerings, what
a little thing is mere pleasure as compared with the
large happiness of mankind. A shilling will bring
happiness to the humblest understander of Shake-
speare, and, for the nonce, he will mix with em-
perors, philosophers, princes, and wits — on equal
terms, for Shakespeare's humanity is every man's.
That is his title to immortality. His wide spirit
will outlive the mere letter of narrow doctrines, and
his winged words, vibrant with the music of the
larger religion of humanity, will go thrilling down
the ages, while dogmas die and creeds crumble
in the dust.

AFTER THOUGHT

In saying that only he ivho wrote the speech of
Hamlet beginning ''To be or not to be'' could have
written Falsta^'s speech on Honour before battle, I
am tempted to relate what I think was a true word
spoken in humour — and nothing can point a truth
so well as humour !

Some tims ago I was requested to have my voice
recorded for the British Museum, and the choice for
tJie purpose fell upon the two speeches above-mentioned

205

The Humanity of Shakespeare

— in the respective voices of Hamlet and Falsta^.
Those gramophone records now reside in the archives
of the British Museum. In an expansive moment I
once related {this was, of course, purely fictional) that
so nervous was I, feeling myself in the presence of
posterity, that I spoke the speech of Hamlet in the
voice of Falstaff and that of Falstaff in the voice of
Hamlet ; and I thus made the interesting discovery
that Hamlet and Falsta^ were one and the same
person — they were in fact Shakespeare ! If the
reader will turn to Falsta^'s speech on Honour quoted
in this essay, and will read it with the voice or with
the eyes of Hamlet, he will find that these identical
words might have been spoken by him to his friend
Horatio, as they were in fact spoken by the fat knight
to Prince Hal ; they are equally appropriate to the
gentle humour of the sweet Prince as they are in the
mouth of the philosophic sensualist.

Turn again to the speech beginning '"'' To be or
not to he,'''' and you may imagine the prototype of
Falstaff sitting in the Mermaid Tavern speaking
the lines on the Immortality of the Soul to his boon
companions. You can imagine Shakespeare him-
self sitting in an ingle nook listening to the words of
wisdom uttered by this stricken idealist, this boulting
hutch of beastliness, and taking them down in short-
hand to give to the actor who first played Hamlet.

And here another After-thought springs to my mind.
I have referred in an earlier essay {" Our Betters ") to

206

The Humanity of Shakespeare

the strange vicissitudes of the English tongue ichich
changes in each generation. Why should not the
gramophone, like the cinematograph, be used for
educational purposes ? Why should it not be used
to perpetuate for future generations a standard pronun-
ciation of the English language ? There is at present
practically no law but that of fleeting custom as a
guide to pronunciation. A Committee might be
forined to decide on some universal approved method
of preserving the language in its strength and purity.
What would we not give to-day if we could hear on
this gramophone the voice of Elizabeth and of Shake-
speare ! How did Ccesar pronounce Latin ? How
did Sophocles speak Greek ?

THE TEMPEST
IN A TEACUP

A PERSONAL EXPLANATION

THE ti:m:pest

IN A TEACUP

1904.

^m ^HE question whether the works of Shakespeare,
* and The Tempest in particular, should or should
not be represented on the stage, is one which has
of late been debated with considerable vehemence.
The negative point of view is open to argument,
although it is obviously a point of view not shared
by Shakespeare. Nor do I propose to tread such
debatable ground. It is rather my purpose to deal
with the more practical question of the manner
in which the poet's work should be produced.

Of all Shakespeare's works The Tempest is
probably the one which most demands the aids
of modern stage-craft. But to the super-subtle
nothing is so baffling as the obvious.

My efforts to present this fantasy were widely
and generously recognised by men of letters and
by the public at large ; they also called forth the
wrath of others, whose vituperation, I prefer to
think, was not due to a desire to baulk high

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The Tempest

endeavour, but rather to an honest ignorance of
the text of the play, and to a whole-hearted inca-
paeity to, appreciate the spirit of the poet. To the
prosaic nothing is so embarrassing as the poetic.
My contention is that unless The Tempest be
produced in such a way as to bring home to
audiences the fantasy and the beauties of the play
it were better not to attempt it at all. The ques-
tion is : Can that fantasy and those beauties be
conveyed to the senses of an audience by means
of what is called " adequate " treatment ? I say
No. And I further contend that it is far more
satisfactory to read the play in the study than
to see it presented in the archaic and echoic
methods so dear to epicures in mediocrity. In-
deed, if so presented, the public would stay away,
and the public would be right, for the illusion of
the spectator would be dulled rather than
quickened by such a presentation. Illusion is
the whole business of the theatre. Treatment, I
hold, is essential to the proper comprehension of
Shakespeare on the stage, and nowhere, I think,
is this more evident than in the case of The Tem-
pest. This fact was recognised by the late Charles
Kean, who gave to the public an elaborate and
beautiful production of this fairy-play. The wits
of the period spoke of that distinguished and
enthusiastic artist as an " upholsterer," a " spec-
tacle-maker," and a " poodle-trimmer " !

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The Tempest

Since that time the science of invective
appears to have made considerable strides.

A nameless writer in Blackwood's Magazine
made the broad statement that Shakespeare's
plays " afford no decent opportunity for elaborate
scenery." If ever there were an author whose
plays do lend themselves to elaborate stage treat-
ment, that author is assuredly Shakespeare.
None, indeed, is so rich in scenic suggestion, and
it can scarcely be denied that his works were pri-
marily intended for the theatre, nor that the
theatre is primarily intended for theatre-goers.
The bookworm has always his book.

The nameless writer further said that " it
should be impossible to turn them (the plays) to
the vulgar use of stage illusion.^' And this is
written of an art which is the art of illusion — this
is written of the work of a man who was an actor
and a playwright !

It may be broadly laid down that whatever
tends to quicken the imagination of the audience
— in fact, to create illusion — is justifiable on the
stage. Whatever detracts from the appreciation
of the author's work and disturbs the illusion is
to be deprecated — is, ^in fact, bad art. The
measure of success or failure must be left to the
judgment of each individual. It is a question of
taste on the part of the artist who presents the
play, and a question of receptiveness on the part

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The Tempest

of the spectator. There are those who see nothing
but scenery — who hear nothing but the carpen-
ter's hammer — but what else should they see ?
What else should they hear ? When Caliban
hears sounds and sweet music in the air and sees
riches in the clouds, the drunken butler and the
chartered fool split their sides with ironic laughter.
Our nameless writer waxed fervid in his
denunciation : " No intelligent actor would ever
bring the poet's masterpieces under a mass of
irrelevant scenery " (sic). Our writer also grew
highly indignant with the playing of The Tempest
in three acts instead of five, ignoring the fact
that this arrangement comes much nearer to the
system which prevailed in Shakespeare's own
time, when scenes and acts followed each other
in swift succession. All Shakespeare's plays have
to undergo a certain amount of abbreviation to
bring them within the time-limit demanded by
modern audiences, and indeed there is every
reason to believe that these plays were consider-
ably " cut " in Shakespeare's own time. But our
nameless writer's anathema was not yet ex-
hausted, for he made the sweeping denunciation :
" All the actors are incompetent." And worse
remained behind : " The orchestra is hidden be-
neath a mass of vegetables." This is no doubt
another instance of the vulgarity of stage illu-
sion. Owing, we are told, to the din of the scene-

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The Tempest

shifters, the actors " put a false emphasis on every
syllable which they uttered." It seemed, indeed,
that the " national honour " was almost involved by
the " lamentable caprice " of the actor-manager.

But the main indictment of the revival was
against the introduction of " pantomime." To
this I reply that whatever there is of pantomime
is Shakespeare's. I will endeavour to prove that
at no point have I gone in this direction outside
the instructions of the dramatist. Shakespeare's
stage instructions in Act I., Scene 1, are as fol-
lows : — " On a ship at sea — A tempestuous noise
of lightning and thunder heard.'''' Acting upon
these instructions, we were presumptuous enough
to endeavour to depict a ship at sea, as well as
modern appliances will allow, to reproduce the
effect of thunder and lightning, and to assume
that their accompaniment might not too incon-
gruously be a rough sea.

Again, another of Shakespeare's stage instruc-
tions runs : " Enter several strange Shapes, bring-
ing in a banquet, they dance about it ivith gentle
actions of salutation ; and, inviting the King, etc., to
eat, they depart.'" Here there is a certain suggestion
of pantomime which was carried out faithfully.

Again, in the same scene, Shakespeare's in-
structions are : " Thunder and lightning — enter
Ariel like a harpy — claps his wings on the table,

215

The Tempest

and with a quaint device the banquet vanishes.''^
Here Ariel was permitted to resemble a harpy as
nearly as possible. The pantomime is Shakespeare's.
The ballet introduced may need a few words
of apology or explanation. In this scene Shake-
speare deliberately introduces a masque, which
Prospero conjures up for the entertainment of
Ferdinand and Miranda. We merely tried to
follow the author's injunctions, and we know how
elaborate were the masques in Shakespeare's day.
Iris and Ceres and Juno enter, summoned by the
wand of Prospero, and according to the instruc-
tions of the dramatist, they sing. (Throughout
this play Shakespeare has recourse to the aid of
music.) The instructions are somewhat meagre
as to the nature of the masque, and in their
absence I thought it justifiable to invent the
revels as suggested by the dialogue. Briefly, Iris
calls upon the Nymphs to be merry and to dance
with the Reapers.

At this point Shakespeare introduces a masque,
in which Iris calls on the " Naiads of the wind-
ing brooks .... to celebrate a contract of
true love," with the " sunburnt sicklemen of
August weary." The author's stage instructions
are as follows : — " Enter certain Reapers properly
habited. They join with the Nymphs in a graceful
dance.'' To illustrate this incident, I have de-
signed a little ballet with a purpose, of which

216

The Tempest

the following explanatory story may not be amiss.
The Naiads of the winding brooks are discovered
disporting themselves in the water among the
rushes and water-lilies. Iris calls on them to leave
their crisp channels to dance on the green turf.
Nothing loth, the Naiads leave their native element
and dance as mortals dance. The sudden appear-
ance of the boy Cupid interrupts their revels — the
Naiads modestly immerse themselves in the water.
Cupid, ever a match-maker, brings in his train the
sunburnt sicklemen who, leaving their lonely
furrows, are enjoined by Iris to make holiday with
the Nymphs " in country footing." Taking ad-
vantage of the chaste amiability of the Nymphs,
the Reapers endeavour to embrace them, but their
advances are indignantly repulsed, the maidens
very rightly pointing to their ringless wedding-
fingers, it being illegal (in fairy-land) to exchange
kisses without a marriage certificate. Thus re-
buffed, the Reapers continue their dance alone.
Suddenly Cupid re-appears on the scene, and shoots
a dart in the heart of each coy maiden ; at once
they relent, and, love conquering modesty, they
sue to the Reapers. But the Reapers are now
obdurate. They laugh ; the maidens weep. Cupid
now shoots an arrow into the heart of each of the
Reapers, who, seeing their little friends aweep,
sue to them, pointing to their wedding-fmgers.
Cupid re-appears on the scene, and an impromptu

217

The Tempest

wedding is arranged, all the Reapers and Nymphs
taking part in the ceremony. To the wedding
song of " Honour, riches, marriage-blessing," the
Nymphs assume the marriage veils which they
gather from the mists of the lake, and each having
received a ring and a blessing at the hands of the
Rev. Master Cupid, they dance off with the Reapers
in quest of everlasting happiness, thus triumphantly
vindicating the ethics of the drama. No excuse is
necessary for this introduction, which is in obedience
to the author's directions. In the absence of any
detailed instructions as to the nature of the masque
introduced by Shakespeare, it is hoped that this
fanciful trifle will serve. It certainly had the
effect of pleasing the public, and can offend none
but the professional purist.

Again, in the scene in which Prospero deter-
mines to punish Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo,
we endeavoured to follow faithfully the some-
what meagre instructions which are given in the
play. " A noise of hunters is heard. Enter
divers spirits in shapes of dogs and hounds, hunt-
ing them about, Prospero and Ariel setting them
on.'" Prospero says, " I will plague them all
even to roaring." Although we could not attain
to the degree of realism which Shakespeare would
have us attempt when he gives us instructions :
" Enter divers spirits in shapes of dogs and hounds —
hunting them about,'' yet we endeavoured to present

218

The Tempest

spirits in animal shapes ; and in order to illustrate
the diseomfiturc of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stcphano
we followed Shakespeare's directions to Ariel :

" Go, charge my gobhns that they grind their joints
"With dry convulsions ; shorten np their sinews
With aged cramps. Let them he hunted soundly."

I venture to assume that by these instruetions
Shakespeare intended that the goblins should
grind their joints with dry convulsions and that
they should " hunt them soundly." Prospero also
says, " I will plague them all even to roaring."
Those who condemned us for introducing the
goblins which they denounced as the intrusion of
" vulgar pantomime," evidently overlooked the
stage instructions to which I have drawn atten-
tion. And they forgot that a high fantastical
note runs through the whole play which was
intended to amuse (dare I say it ?) the audience
for which Shakespeare wrote.

Some of our critics maintained that in this
production the poetry had been deliberately dis-
pensed with as a tiresome superfluity, and that
the setting alone had been considered. There
were some, of course, to whom our stage treat-
ment conveyed no sense of poetry, and these
clamoured for a mode of production which we
were told existed in Shakespeare's own day.
They frankly preferred placards announcing the
scenes in order thoroughly to abandon themselves

219

The Tempest

to the poetry of the play. They would go farther,
no doubt, and have the female parts played by
males, as in Shakespeare's day. This is the style
of art so dear to Bottom the Weaver, and to this
spirit was given full rein in our production of
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, when placards an-
nounced " This is a Forest," and when Thisbe
(played by a male actor) carried a board with
the words " This is a Maiden," and Snug the
Joiner was labelled " This is a Lion." I can
imagine how Shakespeare would have laughed
these champions to scorn.

At the end of the play I ventured upon a
certain modification of the text by omitting the
Epilogue addressed by the actor to the audi-
ence, reserving Prospero's glorious speech begin-
ning " Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes
and groves " for the end of the play.

Now, as to the characterisation in this play.
The character most assailed was Caliban. I
took it for granted that Shakespeare's characters
were self-explanatory. Here again, it appears, I
was mistaken. One writer maintained that Cali-
ban— like Shylock ! — is a purely comic character,
and the attempt at the end of the play to mate-
rialise Shakespeare's spirit in a tableau met with
the gravest displeasure. Many others denounce
as un-Shakespearean any note of humanity which

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The Tempest

redeems his nature — Caliban, they said, was

merely a monster. Careless reading has onee

more been the pitfall of the censorious. For it

has been maintained with fond reiteration that

Caliban is described by Shakespeare himself as

" a freckled whelp, hag-born, not honour 'd with

a human shape." Precisely the contrary is the

case. The lines are as follows :

" Then was this island —
(Save for the son that she did litler here,
A freckled whelp, hag-born) — ^not honour'd with
A human shape."

Thus Shakespeare definitely states that Caliban
had a human shape. Caliban, too, is described by
Shakespeare as " a savage and deformed slave."
If he were the unredeemed monster that these
writers would have us think, is it possible that
he should have uttered those beautiful lines,
" This isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet
airs that give delight and hurt not," &c. ? In-
deed, in his love of music and his affinity with the
unseen world, we discern in the soul which in-
habits the brutish body of this elemental man
the germs of a sense of beauty, the dawn of art.
And as he stretches out his arms towards the
empty horizon, we feel that from the conception
of sorrow in solitude may spring the birth of a
hiffher civilisation.

to'

I have endeavoured to show that whatever in

221

The Tempest

this production was not actually contained in the
letter of Shakespeare's text, sprang from the
spirit which animated it, and I contend that those
who attributed its success to the meretricious
aids of scenic and other embellishments were
mistaken in their conclusions — however discon-
certing it may be to attribute success to merit.

This brings me to the main purpose of this
Personal Explanation. It has been freely stated
that in the presentation of this play, I had but
pandered to a vulgar public, incapable of appre-
ciating the works of the poet, and that, in order
to attract that public, I was driven to overload
the play with a lavish expenditure of money. To
this charge I reply by the simple statement of
fact that its cost was half that expended on a
modern play recently presented at His Majesty's
Theatre. And I fail to see why Shakespeare
should be treated with less care, with less rever-
ence and with less lavishness of resource than is
demanded by modern authors. So far from pan-
dering to the public taste, I claim that an artist
works primarily for himself — his first aim is to
satisfy his own artistic conscience. His output
is the result of the impetus in him to work out
his own ideals. Even were the public satisfied
with a less competent treatment of the poet's
work, I should still have presented it in the way
I did. But so far from admitting that the public

222

The Tempest

— my public — is a vulgar public, I am conscious
that their demands upon the art of the manager
are too often in excess of his powers to gratify
them. I have indeed reason to be grateful to
the public for having supported the policy and
work of my theatre persistently, regardless of the
sneers of those who arc not the leaders, but the
camp-followers of progress. I have no wish to
quarrel with those who attack that policy and
that work, for I hold that the strength of men, as
of governments, is in precise proportion to the
opposition they encounter. I claim, however, the
right to protest against the imputation of sordid
motives in placing great works before the public.
I am at least entitled to maintain that I have
done my best to present the works of Shakespeare
in the manner which I considered most worthy,
and I feel a certain pride in remembering that,
be our method right or wrong, we have brought
the poet's creations before hundreds of thousands.

AFTER-THOUGHT

Since this Personal Explanation rcas written the
art of stage presentation has progressed — and I think
rightly progressed — in the direction of a greater sini-

223

J

The Tempest

plicily of treatment. This progress is chiefly due
to the increased facilities for economy in the
lighting of scenery — suggestion is often stronger than
actuality where purely fantastic and imaginative
works are concerned. I would, of course, not apply
this law to scenes of realism, in which most of
Shakespeare" s plays pass. In Hamlet / have found
myself most happy in the purely suggestive surround-
ings of tapestries, and I have received assurances from
many playgoers that they were more impressed by
this mode of treating the play than by any other. In
our recent production of Macbeth, too, the scenery
was characterised by simple grandeur rather than by
magnificence of detail. Rugged simplicity was the
note of an admirable production of King Lear
at the Haymarket Theatre. It would, of course, be
an artistic mistake to apply this treatment to such
plays as Julius Caesar or Richard II. or Henry
VIII., or indeed to any of the history plays.
Sirnplicity is certainly an enviable state. In life
— as in art — it is only arrived at after wandering
through the maze of complexity. It is the slow
process of elimination of unessentials.

KING HENRY VIII

INTRODUCTORY

In these notes, written as a holiday task, it is
not intended to give an exhaustive record of the
events of Henry's reign ; hut rather to o§er an
impression of the more prominent personages in
Shakespeare'' s play ; and perhaps to aid the
playgoer in a fuller appreciation of the conditions
which governed their actions.

Marienhad, 1910.

KING HENRY VIII.

XJOLBEIN, with skilful brush, has drawn the
^•** character and written the history of Henry
in his great picture. Masterful, cruel, crafty,
merciless, courageous, sensual, through-seeing,

humorous, mean, matter of fact.
His worldly-wise, and of indomitable will.

Character. Henry the Eighth is perhaps the

most outstanding figure in English
history. The reason is not far to seek. The genial
adventurer with sporting tendencies and large-
hearted proclivities is always popular with the
mob, and " Bluff King Hal " was of the eternal
type adored by the people. He had a certain
outward and inward afhnity with Nero. Like

22^

King Henry VIII.

Nero, he was corpulent ; like Nero, he was
red-haired ; like Nero, he sang and poetised ;
like Nero, he was a lover of horsemanship, a
master of the arts, and the slave of his passions.
If his private vices were great, his public virtues
were no less considerable. He had the ineffable
quality called charm, and the appearance of good-
nature which captivated all who came within the
orbit of his radiant personality. He was the
beau gargon, endearing himself to all women by
his compelling and conquering manhood. Henry
was every inch a man, but he was no gentleman.
He chucked even Justice under the chin, and
Justice winked her blind eye.

It is extraordinary that, in spite of his brutality,
both Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn
spoke of him as a model of kindness. This
cannot be accounted for merely by that divinity
which doth hedge a king.

There is, above all, in the face of Henry, as
limned by Holbein, that look of impenetrable
mystery which was the background of his character.
Many royal men have this strange quality ; with
some it is inborn, with others it is assumed.
Cavendish, who was Wolsey's faithful secre-
tary— he who after the Cardinal's fall wrote
the interesting " Life of Wolsey," one of the
manuscript copies of which evidently fell into
Shakespeare's hands before he wrote Henry VIII.

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King Henry VIII.

— records this saying of Henry : " Three may
keep counsel, if two be away ; and if I thought
my cap knew my counsel, I would throw it in
the fire and burn it." Referring to this passage.
Brewer says, " Never had the King spoke a truer
word or described himself more accurately. Few
would have thought that, under so careless and
splendid an exterior — the very ideal of bluff,
open-hearted good humour and frankness — there
lay a watchful and secret mind that marked what
was going on without seeming to mark it ; kept
its own counsel until it was time to strike, and
then struck as suddenly and remorselessly as a
beast of prey. It was strange to witness so much
subtlety combined with so much strength."

There was something baffling and terrifying in
the mysterious bonhomie of the King. In spite of
Caesar's dictum, it is the fat enemy who is to be
feared ; a thin villain is more easily seen through.
Henry's antecedents were far from glorious. The
Tudors were a Welsh family of somewhat humble

stock. Henry VII. 's great-grandfather
His was butler or steward to the Bishop

Ancestry. of Bangor, whose son, Owen Tudor,

coming to London, obtained a clerk-
ship of the Wardrobe to Henry V.'s Queen,
Catherine of France. Within a few years of
Henry's death, the widowed Queen and her clerk
of the wardrobe were secretly living together as

229

King Henry VIII.

man and wife. The two sons of this morganatic
match, Edmund and Jasper, were favoured by
their half brother, Henry VI. Edmund, the elder,
was knighted, and then made Earl of Richmond.
In 1453 he was formally declared legitimate, and
enrolled a member of the King's Council. Two
years later he married the Lady Margaret Beaufort,
a descendant of Edward III. It was this union
between Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort
which gave Henry VII. his claim by descent to
the English throne.

The popularity of the Tudors was, no doubt,
enhanced by the fact that with their line kings
of decisively English blood for the first time since
the Norman Conquest sat on the English throne.

When Henry VIII. ascended the throne in
1509, England regarded him with almost universal
loyalty. The memory of the long
His Early years of the Wars of the Roses and
Days. the wars of the Pretenders, during

the reign of his father, were fresh
in the people's mind. No other than he could
have attained to the throne without civil war.

Within two months he married Katharine of
Aragon, his brother's widow, and a few days
afterwards the King and Queen were crowned
with great splendour in Westminster Abbey. He
was still in his eighteenth year, of fine physical
development, but of no special mental precocity.

230

King Henry VIII.

For the first five years of his reign he was in-
fluenced by his Council, and especially by his
father-in-law, Ferdinand the Catholic, giving little
indication of the later mental vigour and power of
initiation which were to make his reign so memor-
able in the annals of England.

The political situation in Europe was a difficult
one for Henry to deal with. France and Spain
were the rivals for Imperial dominion. England
was in danger of falling between two stools, such
was the eagerness of each that the other should
not support her. Henry, through his marriage
with Katharine, began by being allied to Spain,
and this alliance involved England in the costly
burden of war. Henry's resentment at the empty
result of this warfare broke the Spanish alliance.
Wolsey's aim was to keep the country out of wars,
and a long period of peace raised England to the
position of arbiter of Europe in the balanced
contest between France and Spain.

It was in connection with the diplomacies and
intrigues, now with one Power, now with the
other, that in 1520 was held the
The Field famous meeting with the French
of the Cloth King at Guisnes, known as " the
of Gold, Field of the Cloth of Gold."

That the destinies of kingdoms
sometimes hang on trifles is curiously exemplified
by a singular incident which preceded the famous

231

King Henry VIII.

meeting. Francis I. prided himself on his beard.
As a proof of his desire for the meeting with Francis,
and out of compliment to the French King, Henry
announced his resolve to wear his beard uncut
until the meeting took place. But he reckoned
without his wife. Some weeks before the meeting,
Louise of Savoy, the Queen-Mother of France,
taxed Boleyn, the English Ambassador, with a
report that Henry had put off his beard. " I
said," writes Boleyn, " that, as I suppose, it hath
been by the Queen's desire, for I told my lady
that I have hereafore known when the King's
grace hath worn long his beard, that the Queen
hath daily made him great instance, and desired
him to put it off for her sake." This incident
caused some resentment on the part of the French
King, who was only pacified by Henry's tact.

So small a matter might have proved a casus
belli.

The meeting was held amidst scenes of un-
paralleled splendour. The temporary palace
erected for the occasion was so magnificent that
a chronicler tells us it might have been the work
of Leonardo da Vinci. Henry, " the goodliest
prince that ever reigned over the realm of Eng-
land," is described as " honnete, hault et droit, in
manner gentle and gracious, rather fat, with a
red beard, large enough, and very becoming."

On this occasion Wolsey was accompanied by

232

King Henry VIII.

two hundred gentlemen clad in crimson velvet,
and had a bodyguard of two hundred archers.
He was clothed in crimson satin from head to
foot, his mule was covered with crimson velvet,
and her trappings were all of gold.

There were jousts and many entertainments
and rejoicings, many kissings of Royal cheeks,
but the Sovereigns hated each other cordially.
When monarchs kiss in public we may look for
a shuffling of the entente. While they were kissing
they were plotting against each other.

A more unedifying page of history has not
been written. Appalling, indeed, are the shifts
and intrigues which go to make up the records of
the time.

The rulers of Europe were playing a game of
cards, in which all the players were in collusion
with, and all cheating, each other. Temporising
and intriguing, Henry met the Spanish monarch
immediately before and immediately after his
meeting with the French King. Within a few
months France and Spain were again at war;
and England, in a fruitless and costly struggle,
fought on the side of Spain.

It was the divorce from Katharine of Aragon
and its momentous consequences which finally
put an end to the alliance with Spain ; and to
the struggle with France succeeded the long
struggle with Spain, which culminated in the great

i33

King Henry VIII.

event of The Armada in the reign of Henry's
daughter, EHzabeth,

However, we are not here concerned with
the pohtical aspect of the times, but rather
with the dramatic and domestic side of Henry's
being. In the play of Henry VIII., the author
or authors (for to another than Shakespeare is
ascribed a portion of the drama) have given
us as impartial a view of his character as a due
regard for truth on the one hand, and a respect
for the scaffold on the other, permitted.

There can be no doubt that when Henry
ascended the throne he had a sincere wish to

serve God and uphold the right.
His In his early years he was really

Aspirations, devout and generous in almsgiving.
Erasmus affirmed that his Court was
an example to all Christendom for learning and
piety. To the Pope he paid deference as to the
representative of God.

With youthful enthusiasm, the young King,
looking round, and seeing corruption on every
side, said to Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador :
" Nor do I see any faith in the world save in me,
and therefore God Almighty, who knows this,
prosper my affairs."

In Henry's early reign England was trusted
more than any country to keep faith in her
alliances. At a time when all was perfidy and

234

King Henry VIII.

treachery, promises and alliances were made only
to be broken when self-interest prompted. His-
tory, like Nature itself, is ruled by brutal laws,
and to play the round game of politics with single-
handed honesty would be to lose at every turn.
Henry was born into an inheritance of blood and
blackmail. Corruption has its vested interests.
It is useless to attempt to stem the recurrent tide
of corruption by sprinkling the waves with holy
water.

Then religion was a part of men's daily lives,
but the principles of Christianity were set at
naught at the first bidding of expediency.

Men murdered to live — the axe and the sword
were the final Court of Appeal. Nor does the
old order change appreciably in the course of a
few hundred years. In international politics, as
in public life, when self-interest steps in Christianity
goes to the wall.

Blood is thicker than water, but gold is thicker
than blood.

To-day we grind our axe with a difference.
A more subtle process of dealing with our rivals
obtains. To-day the pen is mightier than the
sword, the stylograph is more deadly than the
stiletto. The bravo still plies his trade. He no
longer takes life, but character.

Henry's eyes soon opened. His character, like
his body, underwent a gradual process of expansion.

235

King Henry VIII.

Soon the lighter side of kingship was not dis-
dained. One authority wrote in 1515 : " He is
a youngHng, cares for nothing but
His girls and hunting." He was an in-

Pastimes. veterate gambler, and turned the
sport of hunting into a martyrdom,
rising at four or five in the morning and hunting
till nine or ten at night. Another contemporary
writes : " He devotes himself to accomplishments
and amusements day and night, is intent on nothing
else, and leaves business to Wolsey, who rules
everything."

As a sportsman, Henry was the beau-ideal of
his people. In the lists he especially distinguished
himself, " in supernatural feats, changing his
horses, and making them fly or rather leap, to the
delight and ecstasy of everybody."

He also gave himself to masquerades and
charades. We are told : "It was at the Christ-
mas festivals at Richmond that Henry VIII.
stole from the side of the Queen during the jousts,
and returned in the disguise of a strange Knight,
astonishing all the company with the grace and
vigour of his tilting. At first the King appeared
ashamed of taking part in these gladiatorial
exercises, but the applause he received on all
sides soon inclined him openly to appear on every
occasion in the tilt-yard. Katharine humoured
the childish taste of her husband for disguisings

236

King Henry VIII.

and masqiiings, by pretending great surprise
when he presented himself before her in some
assumed charaetcr."

He was gifted with enormous energy ; he
could ride all day, changing his horses nine or
ten times a day ; then he would dance all night ;
even then his energies were not exhausted ; he
would write what the courtiers described as poetry,
or he would compose music, or he would dash off
an attack on Luther, and so earn from the Pope
the much-coveted title of Fidei Defensor.

In shooting at the butt, it is said, Henry
excelled, drawing the best bow in England. At
tennis, too, he excelled beyond all others. He
was addicted to games of chance, and his courtiers
permitted him to lose as much as £3,500 in the
course of one year — scarcely a tactful proceeding.
He played with taste and execution on the organ,
harpsichord, and lute. He had a powerful voice,
and sang with great accomplishment.

One of Henry's anthems, " O Lord, the Maker
of all thyng," is said to be of the highest merit, and
is still sung in our cathedrals. In his songs he par-
ticularly liked to dwell on his constancy as a lover :

" As the holly groweth green and never change th hue,
So I am — ever have been — unto my lady true."

And again :

" For whoso loveth, should love but one."
An admirable maxim.

237

King Henry VIII.

"Pastime with Good Company," composed
and written by Henry, was sung in the production
at His Majesty's Theatre.

In spite of all these distractions, Henry was an
excellent man of business in the State. Although
he began by throwing himself into
As States- dissipation with the energy which
man. characterised all his doings, the

autocrat only slumbered in Henry ;
and before many years had passed he flung
the enormous energy, which he had hitherto
reserved for his pleasure, into affairs of State.

Under Henry, the Navy was first organised
as a permanent force. His power of detail was
prodigious in this direction. Ever loving the
picturesque, even in the most practical affairs of
life, Henry " acted as pilot and wore a sailor's coat
and trousers, made of cloth of gold, and a gold
chain with the inscription, Dieu est mon droit, to
which was suspended a whistle which he blew
nearly as loud as a trumpet." A strange picture !

He was a practical architect, and Whitehall
Palace and many other great buildings owed their
masonry to his hand.

He spoke French, Spanish, Italian and Latin
with great perfection.

He said many wise things. Of the much-
debated divorce, Henry said : " The law of
every man's conscience be but a private Court, yet

238

King Henry VIII.

it is the highest and supreme Court for judgment
or justice." As the most unjust wars have often
produced the greatest heroisms, so the vilest causes
have often produced the profoundest utterances.

He appears to have been at peace with himself
and complacent towards God. In 1541, during
his temporary happiness with Catherine Howard,
he attended mass in the chapel, and " receiving
his Maker, gave Him most hearty thanks for the
good life he led and trusted to lead with his wife ;
and also desired the Bishop of Lincoln to make like
prayer, and give like thanks on All Souls' Day."

Henry confessed his sins every day during the
plague. When it abated, his spirits revived, and
he wrote daily love-letters to Anne Boleyn, whom
he had previously banished from the Court.

A stern moralist in regard to the conduct of
others, he had an indulgence towards himself
which enabled him somewhat freely
As to interpret the Divine right of

Moralist. Kings as Le droit de seigneur. But
it is human to tolerate in ourselves
the failings which we so rightly deprecate in our
inferiors.

So strong was he in his self-assurance, that he
made even his conscience his slave.

Henry sometimes lacked regal taste. The
night Anne Boleyn was executed he supped with
Jane Seymour ; they were betrothed the next

239

King Henry VIII.

morning, and married ten days later. It is also
recorded that on the day following Katharine's
death, Henry went to a ball, clad all in yellow.

The commendation or condemnation of Henry's
public life depends upon our point of view — upon
which side we take in the eternal strife between
Church and State.

In this dilemma we must then judge by results,
for the truest expression of a man is his work ;
his greatness or his littleness is measured by his
output. Henry produced great results, though he
may have been the unconscious instrument of
Fate. The motives which guided him in his deal-
ings with the Roman Catholic Church may have
been only selfish — they resulted in the emancipa-
tion of England from the tyranny of Popedom.
A Catholic estimate of him would, of course, have
been wholly condemnatory, yet it must be re-
membered that his quarrel was entirely with the
supremacy of the Pope, and that otherwise Henry's
Church retained every dogma and every observance
believed in and practised by Roman Catholics.

His learning was great, and it was illumined
by his genius. Gradually he learned to control
others — to do this he learned to
His control his temper when control

Greatness. was useful, but he was always
able to make diplomatic use of his
rage — a faculty ever helpful in the conduct of

240

King Henry VIII.

one's life ! In fact, it is difficult to determine
whose genius was the greater — Wolsey's as the
diplomatist and administrator, or Henry's as the
man of action, the figurehead of the State. Around
him he gathered the great men of his time, and
their learning he turned to his own account, with
that adaptiveness which is the peculiar attribute
of genius. Shakespeare himself was not more
assimilative. In Wolsey, Henry appreciated the
mighty minister, and this is one of his claims to
greatness, for graciously to permit others to be
great is a sign of greatness in a king.

WOLSEY

Wolsey was born at Ipswich, probably in the
year 1471. His father, Robert Wolsey, was a
grazier, and perhaps also a butcher, in well-to-do
circumstances. Sent to Oxford at the age of eleven,

at fifteen he was made a Bachelor of
His Early Arts. He became a parish priest of
Life. St. Mary's, at Lymington, in 1500.

Within a year he was subjected to
the indignity of being put into the public stocks
— for what reason is not known. It has been said
that he was concerned in a drunken fray. I
prefer to think that, in an unguarded moment, he
had been tempted to speak the truth. No doubt
this was his first lesson in diplomacy.

Q 241

King Henry VIII.

In 1507 Wolsey entered the service of Henry
VII. as chaplain, and seems to have acted as
secretary to Richard Fox, Lord Privy Seal. Thus
Wolsey was trained in the policy of Henry VII.,
which he never forgot.

When Henry VIII. came to the throne, he soon
realised Wolsey's value, and allowed him full
scope for his ambition.

Wolsey thought it desirable to become a
Cardinal — a view that was shared by Henry,
whose right hand Wolsey had be-
His Grow- come. In 1514 Henry wrote to the
ing Power. Pope asking that the hat should be
conferred on his favourite, who in the
following year was made Lord Chancellor of Eng-
land. There was some hesitancy, which bribery
and threats overcame, and in 1515 Wolsey was
created Cardinal, in spite of the hatred which
Leo X. bore him. Having won this instalment
of greatness, Wolsey promptly asked for the
Legateship, which should give him precedence
over the Archbishop of Canterbury. This
ambition was realised three years later, but
only by what practically amounted to political
and ecclesiastical blackmail. In the Church
and State Wolsey now stood second only to the
King.

As an instance of the state that he kept, we are
told that he had as many as 500 retainers — among

242

King Henry VIII.

them many lords and ladies. Cavendish, his sec-
retary, thus describes his pomp when he walked

abroad : " First went the Cardinal's
His attendants, attired in boddiccs of

Retinue. crimson velvet with gold chains,

and the inferior officers in coats of
scarlet bordered with black velvet. After these
came two gentlemen bearing the great seal and
his Cardinal's hat, then two priests with silver
pillars and poleaxes, and next two great crosses
of silver, whereof one of them was for his Arch-
bishopriek and the other for his legacy, borne
always before him, whithersoever he went or rode.
Then came the Cardinal himself, very sumptuously,
on a mule trapped with crimson velvet and his
stirrup of copper gilt." Sometimes he preferred
to make his progress on the river, for which
purpose he had a magnificent State barge
" furnished with yeomen standing on the bayles
and crowded with his Gentlemen within and
without."

His stables were also extensive. His choir far
excelled that of the King. Besides all the officials
attendant on the Cardinal, Wolsey had 160 personal
attendants, including his High Chamberlain, vice-
chamberlain, twelve gentlemen ushers, daily
waiters, eight gentlemen ushers and waiters of his
privy chamber, nine or ten lords, forty persons
acting as gentlemen cupbearers, carvers, servers,

243

King Henry VIII.

etc., six yeomen ushers, eight grooms of the
chamber, forty-six yeomen of his chamber (one
daily to attend upon his person), sixteen doctors
and chaplains, two secretaries, three clerks, and
four counsellors learned in the law. As Lord
Chancellor, he had an additional and separate
retinue, almost as numerous, including ministers,
armourers, serjeants-at-arms, herald, etc.

Nor was he above using the gentle suasion of
his office to obtain sumptuous gifts from the
representatives of foreign powers —
Gifts from for Giustiniani, on his return to
Foreign Venice, reported to the Doge and

Powers. Senate that " Cardinal Wolsey is very

anxious for the signory to send him a
hundred Damascene carpets for which he has asked
several times, and expected to receive them by the
last galleys. This present might make him pass a
decree in our favour ; and, at any rate, it would
render the Cardinal friendly to our nation in other
matters." The carpets, it seems, were duly sent
to the Cardinal.

To show his disregard for money, it may be
mentioned that in order to ob-
His tain pure water for himself and his

Drinking household, and not being satisfied
Water. with the drinking water at Hamp-

ton Court, Wolsey had the water
brought from the springs at Coombe Hill by means

244

King Henry VIII.

of leaden pipes, at a cost, it is said, of something
like £.50,000.

Wolsey seems to have been a lover of good

food, since Skelton, for whose verse
His Table. the Cardinal had perhaps expressed

contempt, wrote :

" To drynke and for to eate
Swete hypocras * and swete meate
To keep his flesh chast
In Lent for a repast
He eateth capon's stew,
Fesaunt and partriche mewed
Hennes checkynges and pygges."

Skelton, it should be explained, was the Poet
Laureate. It appears that on this score of his
delicate digestion, Wolsey procured a dispensation
from the Pope for the Lenten observances.

He had not a robust constitution, and suffered
from many ailments. On one occasion, Henry
sent him some pills — it is not recorded, however,
that Wolsey swallowed them.

Cavendish speaks of a peculiar habit of the
great Cardinal. He tells us that, " Whenever he
was in a crowd or pestered with
His Orange, suitors, he most commonly held to
his nose a very fair orange whereof
the meat or substance within was taken out,
and filled up again with the part of a sponge

♦Hypocras — "A favourite medicated drink, compound of
wine, usually red, with spices and sugar."

245

King Henry VIII.

wherein was vinegar and other confections against
the pestilent airs ! " The habit may have given
offence to importunate mayors and others — indeed,
the Poet Laureate himself may have been thus af-
fronted by the imperious Cardinal, when he wrote :

" He is set so high
In his hierarchy
Of frantic phrenesy
And foohsh fantasy
That in the Chamber of Stars
All matters there he mars.
Clapping his rod on the Board
No man dare speak a word ;

Some say ' yes ' and some
Sit still as they were dumb.
Thus thwarting over them.
He ruleth all the roast
With bragging and with boast.
Borne up on every side
With pomp and with pride."

As a proof of his sensuous tastes. Cavendish wrote:

" The subtle perfumes of musk and sweet amber
There wanted none to perfume all my chamber."

That Wolsey, like Henry, was possessed of a
sense of humour we have abundant evidence in
his utterances. Yet he kept a Fool
His Fool. about him — possibly in order that
he might glean the opinions of the
courtiers and common people. After Wolsey's fall,
he sent this Fool as a present to King Henry.

246

King Henry VIII.

But so loth was the Fool to leave his master and
to suffer what he considered a soeial descent, that
six tall yeomen had to conduct him to the Court ;
" for," says Cavendish, " the poor fool took on
and fired so in such a rage when he saw that he
must needs depart from my lord. Yet, notwith-
standing, they conveyed him with Master Norris to
the Court, where the King received him most gladly."
At his Palace of Hampton Court there were
280 beds always ready for strangers. These beds

were of great splendour, being made
Hampton of red, green and russet velvet, satin
Court. and silk, and all with magnificent

canopies. The counterpanes, of
which there were many hundreds, we are told, were
of " tawny damask, lined with blue buckram ;
blue damask with flowers of gold ; others of red
satin with a great rose in the midst, wrought with
needlework and with garters." Another is de-
scribed as " of blue sarcenet, with a tree in the
midst and beastes with scriptures, all wrought
with needlework." The splendour of these beds
beggars all description.

His gold and silver plate at Hampton Court
alone, was valued by the Venetian Ambassador

as worth 300,000 golden ducats.
His Plate. which would be the equivalent in

modern coin of a million and a
half ! The silver was estimated at a similar

247

King Henry VIII.

amount. It is said that the quahty was no less
striking than the quantity, for Wolsey insisted
on the most artistic workmanship. He had also
a bowl of gold " with a cover garnished with
rubies, diamonds, pearls and a sapphire set in
a goblet." These gorgeous vessels were decor-
ated with the Cardinal's hat, and sometimes too —
less appropriately perhaps — with images of Christ !

It is said that the decorations and furniture of
Wolsey's palace were on so splendid a scale that
it threw the King's into the shade.

Like a wise minister, Wolsey did not neglect
to entertain the King and keep his
His mind on trivial things. Hampton

Prodigal Court had become the scene of un-

Splendour. restrained gaiety. Music was always
played on these occasions, and the
King frequently took part in the revels, dancing,
masquerading and singing, accompanying himself
on the harpsichord or lute.

The description by Cavendish of the famous
feast given by the Cardinal to the French am-
bassadors gives a graphic account of his prodigal
splendour. As to the delicacies which were fur-
nished at the supper, Cavendish writes : " Anon
came up the second course with so many dishes,
subtleties and curious devices, which were above
a hundred in number, of so goodly proportion
and costly, that I suppose the Frenchmen never

^48

King Henry VIII.

saw the like. The wonder was no less than it
was worthy, indeed. There were castles with
images in the same ; Paul's Chureh and steeple,
in proportion for the quantity as well counterfeited
as the painter should have painted it upon a cloth
or wall. There were beasts, birds, fowls of divers
kinds, and personages, most lively made and
counterfeit in dishes ; some fighting, as it were,
with swords, some with guns and crossbows ;
some vaulting and leaping ; some dancing with
ladies, some in complete harness, justing with
spears, and with many more devices than I am
able with my wit to describe."

Giustiniani, speaking of one of these banquets,
writes : " The like of it was never given either by
Cleopatra or Caligula." We must remember that
Wolsey surrounded himself with such worldly
vanities less from any vulgarity in his nature than
from a desire to work upon the common mind, ever
ready to be impressed by pomp and circumstance.

If the outer man were thus caparisoned, what
of Wolsey's mind ? Its furniture too, beggared
all description. Amiable as Wolsey
The Mind could be, he could also on occasions
of Wolsey. be as brusque as his royal master.
A contemporary writer says : "I
had rather be commanded to Rome than deliver
letters to him and wait an answer. When he
walks in the Park, he will suffer no suitor to

249

King Henry VIII.

come nigh unto him, but commands him away as
far as a man will shoot an arrow."

Yet to others he could be of sweet and gentle
disposition, and ready to listen and to help with
advice.

" Lofty and sour to them that loved him not.
But to those men that sought him sweet as summer,"

To those who regard characters as either black
or white, Wolsey's was indeed a contradiction.
Charges of a personal character have been brought
against the great prelate, which need not here be
referred to, unless it be to say that if they were
true, by so much the less was he a priest, by so
much the more was he a man.

There is no doubt that the Cardinal made
several attempts to become Pope — but this enter-
prise was doomed to failure, although in it he
was supported warmly by the King. To gain
this end much bribery was needed.
His " especially to the younger men who

Ambition. are generally the most needy," as
the Cardinal said. Wolsey was a
sufficiently accomplished social diplomatist to
conciliate the young, for their term of office begins
to-morrow, and gold is the key of consciences. He
was hated and feared, flattered, cajoled and brow-
beaten where possible. But as a source of income
he was ever held in high regard by the Pope.
His own annual income from bribes — royal and

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King Henry VIII.

otherwise — was indeed stupendous, though these
were received with the knowledge of the King.

So great was the power to which Wolsey attained
that Fox said of him : " We have to deal with the
Cardinal, who is not Cardinal but King." He
wrote of himself, " Ego et rex mens,'' and had the
initials, " T.W." and the Cardinal's hat stamped
on the King's coins. These were among the charges
brought against him in his fall.

To his ambitions there was no limit. For the
spoils of office he had " an unbounded stomach."
As an instance of his pretensions it is recorded
that during the festivities of the Emperor's visit
to England in 1520, " Wolsey alone sat down to
dinner with the royal party, while peers, like the
Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, performed
menial offices for the Cardinal, as well as for
Emperor, King and Queen."

When he met Charles at Bruges in 1521 " he
treated the Emperor of Spain as an equal. He
did not dismount from his mule, but merely doffed
his cap, and embraced as a brother the temporal
head of Christendom."

" He never granted audience either to English
peers or foreign ambassadors " (says Giustiniani)
" until the third or fourth time of asking." Small
wonder that he incurred the hatred of the nobility
and the jealousy of the King. During his embassy
to France in 1527, it is said that " his attendants

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King Henry VIII.

served cap in hand, and when bringing the dishes
knelt before him in the act of presenting them.
Those who waited on the Most Christian King,
kept their caps on their heads, dispensing with
such exaggerated ceremonies." Had Wolsey's in-
solence been tempered by his sense of humour,
his fall might have been on a softer place, as his
fool is believed to have remarked.

In his policy of the reform of the Church,
Wolsey dealt as a giant with his gigantic task.
To quote a passage from Taunton :
His Policy. " Ignorance, he knew, was the root
of most of the mischief of the
day ; so by education he endeavoured to give
men the means to know better. Falsehood can
only be expelled by Truth. . . . Had the
other prelates of the age realised the true cause
of the religious disputes, and how much they them-
selves were responsible for the present Ignorance,
the sacred name of religion would not have had
so bloody a record in this country."

Wolsey's idea was, in fact, to bring the clergy
in touch with the thought and conditions of the
time. It is wonderful to reflect that this one brain
should have controlled the secular and ecclesiastical
destinies of Christendom.

To reform the Church would seem to have been
an almost superhuman undertaking, but to a
man of Wolsey's greatness obstacles are only in-

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King Henry VIII.

centives to energy. He was " eager to cleanse
the Church from the accumulated evil effects of
centuries of human passions." A great man is
stronger than a system, while he lives ; but the
system often outlives the man. Wolsey lived in
a time the very atmosphere of which was charged
with intrigue. Had he not yielded to a govern-
ment by slaughter, he could not have existed.

The Cardinal realised that ignorance was one
of the chief causes of the difficulties in the Church.
So with great zeal he devoted himself to the found-
ing of two colleges, one in Ipswich, the other in
Oxford. His scheme was never entirely carried
out, for on Wolsey's fall his works were not com-
pleted. The College at Ipswich fell into abeyance,
but his college at Oxford was spared and refounded.
Originally called Cardinal College, it was renamed
Christ Church, so that not even in name was it
allowed to be a memorial of Wolsey's greatness.

For a long time Wolsey was regarded merely
as the type of the ambitious and arrogant eccle-
siastic whom the Reformation had
His Genius, made an impossibility in the future.
It was not till the mass of docu-
ments relating to the reign of Henry VIII. was
published that it was possible to estimate the
greatness of the Cardinal's schemes. He took a
wider view of the problems of his time than any
statesman had done before. He had a genius for

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King Henry VIII.

diplomacy. He was an artist and enthusiast in
politics. They were not a pursuit to him, but a
passion. Not perhaps unjustly has he been called
the greatest statesman England ever produced.

England, at the beginning of Henry VIII. 's reign,
was weakened after the struggles of the Civil Wars,
and wished to find peace at home at the cost of
obscurity abroad. But it was this England which
Wolsey's policy raised " from a third-rate state of
little account into the highest circle of European
politics." Wolsey did not show his genius to the
best advantage in local politics, but in diplomacy.
He could only be inspired by the gigantic things of
statecraft. When he was set by Henry to deal with
the sordid matter of the divorce, he felt restricted and
cramped. He was better as a patriot than as a royal
servant. It was this feeling of being sullied and
unnerved in the uncongenial skirmishings of the
divorce that jarred on his sensitive nature and made
his ambitious hand lose its cunning. A first-rate
man may not do second-rate things well.

Henry and Wolsey were two giants littered in one
day. Wolsey had realised his possibilities of power
before Henry. But when Henry once learned how
easy it was for him to get his own way, Wolsey learned
how dependent he necessarily was on the King's good
will. And then, " the nation which had trembled
before Wolsey, learned to tremble before the King
who could destroy Wolsey with a breath."

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King Henry VIII.

Had Wolscy been able to fulfil his own ideals,
had he been the head of a republic and not the
servant of a king, his publie record would no doubt
have been on a higher ethical plane. That he
himself realised this is shown by his pathetic words
to Sir William Kingston, which have been but
slightly paraphrased by Shakespeare : " Well, well.
Master Kingston, I see how the matter against me
is framed, but if I had served my God as diligently
as I have done the King, He would not have given
me over in my grey hairs." In this frankness we
recognise once again a flicker of greatness — one
might almost say a touch of divine humour.

Alas, Wolsey learned to howl with the wolves
and to bleat with the lambs. In paddling too long
in the putrescent puddles of politics he lost his
sense of ethical proportion.

The lives of great men compose themselves
dramatically ; Wolsey's end was indeed a fit
theme for the dramatist.

In his later years, Wolsey began to totter on
his throne. The King had become more and
more masterful. It was impossible
His Fall. for two such stormy men to act
permanently in concord. In 1528,
Wolsey said that as soon as he had accomplished
his ambition of reconciling England and France,
and reforming the English laws and settling the
succession, " he would retire and serve God for the

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King Henry VIII.

rest of his days." In 1529 he lost his hold over
Parliament and over Henry. The Great Seal was
taken from him.

The end of Wolsey was indeed appalling in
its sordid tragedy. The woman had prevailed —
Anne's revenge was sufficiently complete to satisfy
even a woman scorned. The King, too, was
probably more inclined to lend a willing ear to
her whisperings, since he had grown jealous of his
minister's greatness. He paid to his superior
the tribute of hatred. Henry, who had treated
the Cardinal as his friend and " walked with him
in the garden arm in arm and sometimes with his
arm thrown caressingly round his shoulder," now
felt very differently towards his one-time favourite.

Covetous of Wolsey's splendour, he asked him
why he, a subject, should have so magnificent an
abode as Hampton Court, whereupon Wolsey
diplomatically answered (feeling perhaps the twitch
of a phantom rope around his neck), " To show
how noble a palace a subject may offer to his
sovereign." The King was not slow to accept
this offer, and thenceforth made Hampton Court
Palace his own.

Wolsey, too, was failing in body — the sharks
that follow the ship of State were already scenting
their prey. As the King turned his back on
Wolsey, Wolsey turned his face to God. Accused
of high treason for having acted as Legate, Wolsey

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King Henry VIII.

pleaded guilty of the offence, committed with the
approval of the King. He was deprived of his
worldly goods, and retired to his house at Esher.

Cavendish says : " My Lord and his family
continued there the space of three or four weeks,
without beds, sheets, tablecloths, cups
Wolsey an and dishes to eat our meat, or to
Exile from he in." He was forced to borrow
Court. the bare necessaries of life. The

mighty had fallen indeed ! This was
in the year 1529. In his diiigrace, he was without
friends. The Pope ignored him. But Queen
Katharine^ — noble in a kindred sorrow — sent words
of sympathy. Death was approaching, and Wolsey
prepared himself for the great event by fasting
and prayer. Ordered to York, he arrived at Peter-
borough in Easter Week. There, it is said :
" Upon Palm Sunday, he went in procession with
the monks, bearing his palm ; setting forth God's
service right honourably with such singing men
as he then had remaining with him.

"And upon Maundy Thursday he made his
Maundy in Our Lady's Chapel, having fifty-nine
poor men, whose feet he washed, wiped and
kissed ; each of these poor men had twelve
pence in money, three ells of canvas to make them
shirts, a pair of new shoes, a cast of mead, three
red herrings, and three white herrings, and the
odd person had two shillings. Upon Easter Day
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King Henry VIII.

he rode to the Resurrection — the ceremony of
bringing the Blessed Sacrament from the sepulchre
where it had lain since the Good Friday ; this
took place early on Easter Monday — and that
morning he went in procession in his Cardinal's
vesture, with his hat and hood on his head, and
he himself sang there the High Mass very devoutly,
and granted Clean Remission to all the hearers,
and there continued all the holidays."

Arrived at York, he indulged with a difference
in his old love of hospitality ; "he kept a noble
house and plenty of both meat and drink for all
comers, both for rich and poor, and much alms
given at his gates. He used much charity and
pity among his poor tenants and others." This
caused him to be beloved in the country. Those
that hated him owing to his repute learned to
love him — he went among the people and brought
them food and comforted them in their troubles.
Now he was loved among the poor as he had been
feared among the great.

On November 4th, he was arrested on a new
charge of high treason and condemned to the
Tower. He left under custody amid
Condemned the lamentations of the poor people,
to the who in their thousands crowded

Tower. round him, crying " God save your

Grace ! God save your Grace ! The
foul evil take all them that hath thus taken you

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King Henry VIII.

from us ! Wc pray God that a very vengeance
may light upon them." He remained at Sheflield
Park, the Earl of Shrewsbury's seat, for eighteen
days. Here his health broke down. There arrived,
with twenty-four of the Guard from London, Sir
William Kingston with an order to conduct him to
the Tower. The next day, in spite of increasing
illness, he set out, but he could hardly ride his
mule.

Reaching the Abbey at Leicester on November
26th, and being received by the Benedictine monks,

he said : " Father Abbot, I am come
His End. hither to leave my bones among

you." Here he took to his last bed,
and made ready to meet his God.

On the morning of November 29th, he who
had trod the w^ays of glory and sounded all the
depths and shoals of honour, he who had shaped
the destinies of Empires, before whom Popes and
Parliaments had trembled, he who had swathed
himself in the purple of kingdom, of power, and
of glory, learned the littleness of greatness and
entered the Republic of Death in a hair-shirt.

KATHARINE

For purity and steadfastness of devotion and
duty, Katharine of Aragon stands unsurpassed in
the history of the world, and Shakespeare has
conceived no more pathetic figure than that of the

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King Henry VIII.

patient Queen living in the midst of an unscru-
pulous Court.

Daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain,
she was betrothed at the age of five to Arthur,
Henry VII. 's eldest son. Though
Her Story. known as the Princess of Wales,
it was not till 1501, when only
sixteen years old, that she was married to Prince
Arthur. She had scarcely been married six months
when Arthur died, at the early age of fifteen, and
she was left a widow. Henry VII., in his desire
to keep her marriage dower of 200,000 crowns,
proposed a marriage between her and Arthur's
brother. Katharine wrote to her father saying
she had " no inclination for a second marriage in
England." In spite of her remonstrances and the
misgivings of the Pope, who had no wish to give
the necessary dispensation for her to marry her
deceased husband's brother, she was betrothed to
the young Henry after two years of widowhood.
But it was not till a few months after Henry VIII.
came to the throne, five years later, that they were
actually married. Henry was five years younger
than Katharine, but their early married life appears
to have been very happy. She wrote to her father,
" Our time is ever passed in continual feasts."

The cruel field sports of the time the Queen
never could take any delight in, and avoided
them as much as possible. She was pious and

260

King Henry VIII.

ascetic and most proficient in needlework. Kath-
arine had a number of children, all of whom died
shortly after birth. It was this consideration in
the first instance which weighed in Henry's mind
in desiring a divorce. The first child to survive
was Princess Mary, born in February, 1516.
Henry expressed the hope that sons would follow.
But Katharine had no more living children.
Henry hoped against hope, and undertook, in the
event of her having an heir, to lead a crusade
against the Turks. Even this bribe to Heaven
proved unavailing. Henry's conscience, which w^as
at best of the utilitarian sort, now began to suffer
deep pangs, and in 1525, when Katharine was
forty years old and he thirty-four, he gave up hope
of the much-needed heir to the throne. The Queen
herself thought her childlessness was " a judgment
of God, for that her former marriage was made in
blood," the innocent Earl of Warwick having been
put to death owing to the demand of Ferdinand
of Aragon.

The King began to indulge in the superstition
that his marriage with a brother's widow was

marked with the curse of Heaven.
Katharine It is perhaps a strange coincidence
and Anne that Anne Boleyn should have ap-
Boleyn. peared on the scene at this moment.

Katharine seems always to have re-
garded her rival with charity and pity. When

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King Henry VIII.

one of her gentlewomen began to curse Anne as
the cause of the Queen's misery, the Queen stopped
her. " Curse her not," she said, " but rather pray
for her ; for even now is the time fast coming
when you shall have reason to pity her and lament
her case."

Undoubtedly Katharine's most notable quality
was her dignity. Even her enemies regarded her
with respect. She was always sus-
Her tained by the greatness of her soul,

Dignity. her life of right doing, and her feeling

of being " a Queen and daughter of
a King." Through all her bitter trials she went, a
pathetic figure, untouched by calumny. If she
had any faults they are certainly not recorded in
history. Her farewell letter to the King would
seem to be very characteristic of Katharine's
beauty of character. She knew the hand of death
was upon her. She had entreated the King, but
Henry had refused her request, for a last interview
with her daughter Mary.

With this final cruelty fresh in her mind she
still could write : " My lord and dear husband, —
I commend me unto you. The hour of my death
draweth fast on, and my case being such, the
tender love I owe you forceth me with a few words,
to put you in remembrance of the health and
safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer
before all worldly matters, and before the care

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King Henry VIII.

and tenderin(T of your own body, for the which
you have cast me into many miseries and yourself
into many cares. For my part I do pardon you
all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that
He will pardon you."

ANNE BOLEYN

The estimation of the character of Anne Boleyn
would seem to be as varied as the spelling of her

name. She is believed to have been
Her born in 1507. The Boleyns or Bullens

Character. were a Norfolk family of French

origin, but her mother was of noble
blood, being daughter of the Earl of Ormonde,
and so a descendant of Edward I. It is a curious
fact that all of Henry's wives can trace their
descent from this King. Of Anne's early life little
is known save that she was sent as Maid of Honour
to the French Queen Claude. She was probably
about nineteen years old when she was recalled
to the English Court and began her round of
revels and love intrigues. Certainly she was a
born leader of men ; many have denied her actual
beauty, but she had the greater quality of charm,
the power of subjugating, the beckoning eye.
An accomplished dancer, we read of her " as
leaping and jumping with infinite grace and
agility." " She dressed with marvellous taste
and devised new robes," but of the ladies who

26'

'J

King Henry VIII.

copied her, we read that unfortunately " none
wore them with her gracefulness, in which she
rivalled Venus." Music, too, was added to her
accomplishments, and Cavendish tells us how
" when she composed her hands to play and her
voice to sing, it was joined with that sweetness of
countenance that three harmonies concurred."

It is difficult to speak with unalloyed admira-
tion of Anne's virtue. At the most charitable com-
putation, she was an outrageous flirt.
Anne Boleyn It would seem that she was genuinely
and in love with Lord Percy, and that

Wolsey. Wolsey was ordered by the then

captivated and jealous King to put
an end to their intrigue and their desire to marry.
Anne is supposed never to have forgiven Wolsey
for this, and by a dramatic irony it was her former
lover, Percy, then become Earl of Northumberland,
who was sent to arrest the fallen Cardinal at York.
It is said that he treated Wolsey in a brutal manner,
having his legs bound to the stirrup of his mule
like a common criminal. When Henry, in his
infatuation for the attractive Lady-in-Waiting to
his Queen, as she then was, wished Wolsey to
become the aider and abettor of his love affairs,
Wolsey found himself placed in the double capacity
of man of God and man of Kings. In these cases,
God is apt to go to the wall — for the time being.
But it was Wolsey's vain attempt to serve two

264

King Henry VIII.

masters that caused his fall, which the French
Ambassador attributed entirely to the ill offices
of Anne Boleyn. This is another proof that courtiers
should always keep on the right side of women.
Nothing could stop Henry's passion for Anne,
and she showed her wonderful cleverness in the

way she kept his love alive for years.
Influence being first created Marchioness of

with the Pembroke, and ultimately triumphing

King. over every obstacle and gaining her

wish of being his Queen. This phase
of her character has been nicely touched by
Shakespeare's own deft hand. She was crowned
with unparalleled splendour on Whit Sunday of 1533.
At the banquet held after the Coronation of Anne
Boleyn, we read that two countesses stood on either
side of Anne's chair and often held a " fine cloth
before the Queen's face whenever she listed to spit."
" And under the table went two gentlewomen, and
sat at the Queen's feet during the dinner." The
courtier's life, like the burglar's, does not appear
to have been one of unmixed happiness.

In the same year she bore Henry a child, but,
to everyone's disappointment, it proved to be a

girl, who was christened Elizabeth,
Sir Thomas destined to become the great Queen
More. of England. Anne's triumph was

pathetically brief. Her most im-
portant act was that of getting the publication

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King Henry VIII.

of the Bible authorised in England. Two years
after her coronation. Sir Thomas More, who
had refused to swear fealty to the King's heir
by Anne, and had been thrown into prison and
was awaiting execution, asked " How Queen
Anne did ? " " There is nothing else but dancing
and sporting," was the answer. " These dances
of hers," he said, " will prove such dances that she
will spurn our heads off like footballs, but it will
not be long ere her head dance the like dance."
In a year's time, this prophecy came true. Her
Lady-in-Waiting, the beautiful Jane Seymour,
stole the King from her who in her time had
betrayed her Royal mistress.

There are two versions with regard to her last
feelings towards the King. Lord Bacon writes
that just before her execution she said : " Com-
mend me to His Majesty and tell him he hath

ever been constant in his career of
Her Last advancing me. From a private
Message to gentlewoman he made me a
the King. marchioness, from a marchioness a

Queen ; and now he hath left no
higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency
the crown of martyrdom." This contains a fine
sting of satire. Another chronicler gives us her
words as follows : " I pray God to save the King,
and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler
or more merciful prince was there never." One

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King Henry VIII.

cannot but think that this latter version of her
dying words may have been edited by his Grace
of Canterburv.

If it is diflicult to reconcile Anne's heartlessness
with her piety, it should be remembered that
cruelty is often the twin-sister of relioious fervour.

Whatever may have been her failings of char-
acter, whatever misfortunes she may have suffered
during her life, Anne will ever live in history as
one of the master mistresses of the world.

THE DIVORCE

Let us go back awhile to the King's first wife,
Katharine of Aragon.

As to the divorce, it will be well to clear away
the enormous amount of argument, of vitupera-
tion and prevarication by which the whole ques-
tion is obscured, and to seek by the magnet of
common sense to find the needle of truth in this
vast bundle of hay.

The situation w^as complicated. In those days
it was generally supposed that no woman could
succeed to the throne, and a male
The successor was regarded as a political

Succession, necessity. Charles V., too, was plot-
ting to depose Henry and to proclaim
James V. as ruler of England, or Mary, who was
to be married to an English noble for this purpose.

The Duke of Buckingham was the most

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King Henry VIII.

formidable possible heir to the throne, were the
King to die without male heirs. His exeeution
took place in 1521. Desperate men take desperate
remedies. Now, in 1519, Henry had a natural son
by Elizabeth Blount, sister of Lord Mount joy.
This boy Henry contemplated placing on the throne,
so causing considerable uneasiness to the Queen.
In 1525 he was created Duke of Richmond. Shortly
after he was made Lord High Admiral of England
and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. It was suggested
that he should marry a Royal princess. Another
suggestion was that he should marry his half-sister,
an arrangement which seems to have commended
itself to the Pope, on condition that Henry aband-
oned his divorce from Queen Katharine ! But
this was not to be, and Mary was betrothed to
the French prince. An heir must be obtained
somehow, and the divorce, therefore, took more
and more tangible shape. A marriage with Anne
Boleyn was the next move. To attain this object,
Henry applied himself with his accustomed energy.
His conscience walked hand in hand with ex-
pediency.

To Rome, Henry sent many embassies and to
the Universities of Christendom much gold, in
order to persuade them to yield to the dictates of
his conscience. His passion for marriage-lines in
his amours was one of Henry's most distinguishing
qualities.

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King Henry VIII.

In 1527 a union between Francis I. and the
Princess Mary was contemplated. Here the ques-
tion of Mary's legitimacy was debated, and this
gave Henry another excuse for regarding the
divorce as necessary. Here was a " pretty kettle
of fish."

There can be little doubt that as a man of God,
VVolsey strongly disapproved of the divorce, but
as the King's Chancellor he felt him-
Wolsey's self bound to urge his case to the

Position. best of his ability. He was in fact

the advocate — the devil's advocate —
under protest. One cannot imagine a more terrible
position for a man of conscience to be placed in,
but once even a cardinal embarks in politics the
working of his conscience is temporarily suspended.
In world politics the Ten Commandments are apt
to become a negligible quantity.

Henry's conscience was becoming more and
more tender. Much may be urged in favour of the
divorce from a political point of view, and no doubt
Henry had a powerful faculty of self-persuasion —
such men can grow to believe that whatever they
desire is right, that " there is nothing either good
or bad but thinking makes it so." It is a pity,
however, that Henry's scruples did not assert
themselves before the marriage with Katharine
of Aragon, for the ethical arguments against such
a union were then equally strong. Indeed, these

269

King Henry VIII.

scruples appear to have been a " family failing,"
for Heniy's sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland,
obtained a dispensation of divorce from Rome on
far slenderer grounds. To make matters worse
for Henry, Rome was sacked — the Pope was a
prisoner in the Emperor's hands. In this state
of things, the Pope was naturally disinclined to
give offence to the Emperor by divorcing his aunt
(Katharine of Aragon).

At all costs, the Pope must be set free — on this
errand Wolsey now set out for France. But
Charles V. was no less wily than Wolsey, and
dispatched Cardinal Quignon to Rome to frustrate
his endeavours, and to deprive Wolsey of his
legatine powers. A schism between Henry and
Wolsey was now asserting itself — Wolsey being
opposed to the King's union with Anne Boleyn.
(" We'll no Anne Boleyns for him ! ") Wolsey
desired that the King should marry the French
King's sister, in order to strengthen his opposition
to Charles V. of Spain.

The Cardinal was indeed in an unenviable
position. If the divorce succeeded, then his
enemy, Anne Boleyn, would triumph ; and he would
fall. If the divorce failed, then Henry would
thrust from him the agent who had failed to
secure the object of his master. And in his fall
the Cardinal would drag down the Church. It is
said that Wolsey secretly opposed the divorce.

270

King Henry VIII.

This is fully brought out in Shakespeare's play,
and is indeed the main eause of Wolsey's

fall.

There was for Henry now only one way out
of the dilemma into which the power of the Pope
had thrown him — that was to obtain
The Kiriffs a dispensation for a bigamous mar-
Dilemma. riage. It seems that Henry himself
cancelled the proposition before it
was made. This scruple was unnecessary, for the
Pope himself secretly made a proposition " that
His Majesty might be allowed two wives."

The sanction for the marriage with Anne
Boleyn was obtained without great difficulty —
but it was to be subject to the divorce from Katha-
rine being ratified. Thus the King was faced
with another obstacle. At this moment began
the struggle for supremacy at Rome between
English and Spanish influence. The Pope had to
choose between the two ; Charles V. was the victor,
whereupon Henry cut the Gordian knot by throwing
over the jurisdiction of Rome. Wolsey was in a
position of tragic perplexity. He was torn by
his allegiance to the King, and his zeal for the
preservation of the Church. He WTOte : "I
cannot reflect upon it and close my eye, for I see
ruin, infamy and subversion of the whole dignity
and estimation of the See Apostolic if this course
is persisted in." But Pope Clement dared not

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King Henry VIII.

offend the Emperor Charles, who was his best,
because his most powerful ally, and had he not
proved his power by sacking Rome ? The Pope>
although quite ready to grant dispensations for a
marriage of Princess Mary and her half-brother
the Duke of Richmond, though he was ready to
grant Margaret's divorce, could not afford to
stultify the whole Papal dignity by revoking the
dispensation he had originally given that Henry
should marry his brother's wife. Truly an edifying
imbroglio ! Henry was desirous of shifting the
responsibility on God through the Pope — the Pope
was sufficiently astute to wish to put the responsi-
bility on the devil through Henry. There was
one other course open — that course the Pope
took.

In 1528 he gave a Commission to Wolsey and
Cardinal Campeggio to try the case themselves,

and pronounce sentence. Back went
The Pope's the embassy to England. Wolsey
Commission, saw through the device, for the

Pope was still free to revoke the
Commission. Indeed Clement's attitude towards
Henry was dictated entirely by the fluctuating
fortune of Charles V., Emperor of Spain. Mean-
while, Charles won another battle against the
French, and the Pope at once gave secret instruc-
tions to Campeggio to procrastinate, assuring
Charles that nothing would be done which should

2^2

King Henry VIII.

be to the detriment of Katharine. The wily
Campeggio (emissary of the Pope) at first sought
to persuade Henry to refrain from the divorce.
Henry refused. Thereupon he endeavoured to
persuade Katharine voluntarily to enter a nunnery.
Among all these plotters and intriguers, Katharine,
adamant in her virtue, maintained her position as
lawful wife and Queen.

When Wolsey and Campeggio visited the Queen
she was doing needlework with her maids. It
appears (and this is important as showing the
inwardness of Wolsey's attitude in the matter of
the divorce) that " from this interview the Queen
gained over both legates to her cause ; indeed,
they would never pronounce against her, and this
was the head and front of the King's enmity to his
former favourite Wolsey." In the first instance,
Wolsey was undoubtedly a party, however un-
willing, to the separation of the King and Queen, in
order that Henry might marry the brilliant and
high-minded sister of Francis I., the Duchess of
Alen9on. That lady would not listen to such a
proposal, lest it should break the heart of Queen
Katharine. Wolsey was, either from personal
enmity towards Anne Boleyn or from his estimate
of her character, or from both, throughout opposed
to the union with that lady.

Subsequently the King sent to Katharine a
deputation from his Council announcing that he
s 273

King Henry VIII.

had, by the advice of Cranmer, obtained the
opinions of the universities of Europe concern-
ing the divorce, and found several
Trial of which considered it expedient. He

Katharine. therefore entreated her, for the
quieting of his conscience, that
she would refer the matter to the arbitration
of four English prelates and four nobles. The
Queen received the message in her chamber,
and replied to it : " God grant my husband a
quiet conscience, but I mean to abide by no de-
cision excepting that of Rome." This infuriated
the King.

After many delays and the appearance of a
document which was declared by one side to be
a forgery, and by the other to be genuine, the
case began on May 31st, 1529. In the great hall
of Blackfriars both the King and Queen appeared
in person to hear the decision of the Court. The
trial itself is very faithfully rendered in Shake-
speare's play. Finding the King obdurate, Kath-
arine protested against the jurisdiction of the
Court, and appealing finally to Rome, withdrew
from Blackfriars.

Judgment was to be delivered on July 23rd,
1529. Campeggio rose in the presence of the
King and adjourned the Court till October. This
was the last straw, and the last meeting of the
Court. Henry had lost. Charles was once more

274

King Henry VIII.

in the ascendant. England and France had
declared war on him in 1528, but England's heart
was not in the enterprise — the feeling of hatred
toward Wolsey became widespread. Henry and
Charles made terms of peace, and embraced once
more after a bloodless and (for England) somewhat
ignominious war. The French force was utterly
defeated in battle. The Pope and Charles signed
a treaty — all was nicely arranged. The Pope's
nephew was to marry the Emperor's natural
dausrhter : certain towns were to be restored to
the Pope, who was to crown Charles with the
Imperial crown. The participators in the sacking
of Rome were to be absolved from sin ; the pro-
ceedings against the Emperor's aunt, Katharine,
were to be null and void. If Katharine could
not obtain justice in England, Henry should not
have his justice in Rome. The Pope and the
Emperor kissed again, and Henry finally cut
himself adrift from Rome. It was the failure of
the divorce that made England a Protestant country.
Henry now openly defied the Pope, by whom
he was excommunicated, and so " deprived of

the solace of the rites of religion ;
The when he died he must lie without

Reformation, burial, and in hell suffer torment

for ever." The mind shrinks from
contemplating the tortures to which the soul of
His Majesty might have been eternally subjected

275

King Henry VIII.

but for the timely intervention of his Grace the
Archbishop of Canterbury !

So far from Henry suffering in a temporal sense,
he continued to defy the opinion and the power
of the world. He showed his greatness by looking
public opinion imflinchingly in the face ; by ignoring
he conquered it. Amid the thunderous roarings
of the Papal bull, Henry stood — as we see him in
his picture — smiling and indifferent. " I never
saw the King merrier than now," wrote a con-
temporary in 1533. Henry always had good cards
— now he held the ace of public opinion up his
sleeve,

Wolsey, although averse to the Queen's divorce
and the marriage of Anne Boleyn, expressed himself
in terms of the strongest opposition to the over-
bearing Pope. A few days before the Papal
revocation arrived, the Cardinal wrote thus :
*' If the King be cited to appear at Rome in person
or by proxy, and his prerogative be interfered
with, none of his subjects will tolerate it. If he
appears in Italy, it will be at the head of a formid-
able army." Opposed as they were to the divorce,
the English people were of one mind with Wolsey
in this attitude.

Henry was not slow to avail himself of the
new development, and he made the divorce become
in the eyes of the people but a secondary considera-
tion to the pride of England. He drew the red

276

King Henry VIII.

herrini! of the Reformation across the trail of the
divorce. The King and his Parliament held that
the Church should not meddle with temporal
affairs. The Church was the curer of souls, not
the curer of the body politic.

Katharine's cause sank into the background.
The voice of justice was drowned by the birth
shrieks of the Reformation.

THE REFORMATION

We must remind ourselves that the divorce
was merely the irritation which brought the dis-
content with Rome to a head. Religious affairs
were in a very turbulent state. The monasteries
were corrupt. The rule of Rome had become
political, not spiritual. Luther had worked at
shattering the pretensions of the Pope in Europe.
Wolsey had prepared the English to acquiesce in
Henry's religious supremacy by his long tenure of
the whole Papal authority within the realm and
the consequent suspension of appeals to Rome.
Translations of the New Testament were being
secretly read throughout the country — a most
dangerous innovation — and Anne Boleyn, who had
no cause to love the Pope or his power, held com-
lete sway over the King.

She and her father were said to be " more
Lutheran than Luther himself." Though Henry
was anti-Papal, he was never anti-Catholic, but,

277

King Henry VIII.

as the representative of God, as head of his own
Church, he claimed to take precedence of the Pope.
Moreover, the spoHation of the Church was not
an unprofitable business.

Rome declared the divorce illegal. Henry,
with the support of his Parliament, abolished all
forms of tribute to Rome, arranged that the election
of bishops should take place without the inter-
ference of the Pope, and declared that if he did
not consent to the King's wishes within three
months, the whole of his authority in England
should be transferred to the Crown. This con-
ditional abolition of the Papal authority was in
due course made absolute, and the King assumed
the title of Head of the Church.

" The breach with Rome was effected with
a cold and calculated cunning, which the most
adept disciple of Machiavelli could not have
excelled."— (Pollard.)

With an adroitness amounting to genius,
Henry now used the moral suasion (not to use
an uglier word) of threats towards the Church to
induce the Pope to relent and to assent to the
divorce. One by one, in this deadly battle, did
the Pope's prerogatives vanish, until the sacerdotal
foundations of Rome, so far as England was con-
cerned, had been levelled to the ground.

After many further political troubles and in-
trigues Henry prevailed on Cranmer, now Arch-

278

King Henry VIII.

bishop of Canterbury, as head of the Church, to
declare the marriage between himself and Kath-
arine to be null and void, and five days later
Cranmer declared that Henry and Anne Boleyn
were lawfully married. On June 1st, 1533, the
Archbishop crowned Anne as Queen in Westminster
Abbey. Shortly after she gave birth to a daughter^
who was christened Elizabeth, and became Queen
of England.

Beyond this incident, with which the strange
eventful history of Shakespeare's play ends, it is
not proposed to travel in these notes, which are
but intended as a brief chronicle that may guide
the play-goer (sometimes a hasty reader) to realise
the conditions of Henry's reign.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

In the days of Henry VIII., the ways of society
differed from our own more in observance than in
spirit. Though the gay world danced and gambled
very late, it rose very early. Its conversation
was coarse and lacked reserve. The ladies cursed
freely. Outward show and ceremony were con-
sidered of the utmost importance. Hats were
worn by the men in church and at meals, and only
removed in the presence of the King and Cardinal.
Kissing was far more prevalent as a mode of
salutation. The Court society spent the greater

2/9

King Henry VIII.

part of its income on clothes. To those in the
King's set, a thousand pounds was nothing out
of the way to spend on a suit of clothes. The
predominant colours at Court were crimson and
green ; the Tudor colours were green and white.
It was an age of magnificent plate, and the posses-
sion and display of masses of gold and silver plate
were considered as a sign of power. Later on in
Shakespeare's time, not only the nobles, but also
the better-class citizens boasted collections of
plate.

A quaint instance of the recognition of dis-
tinctions of rank is afforded by certain " Ordin-
ances " that went forth as the " Bouche of Court."
Thus a duke or duchess was allowed in the morning
one chet loaf, one manchet and a gallon of ale ; in
the afternoon one manchet and one gallon of ale ;
and for after supper one chet loaf, one manchet,
one gallon of ale and a pitcher of wine, besides
torches, etc. A countess, however, was allowed
nothing at all after supper, and a gentleman usher
had no allowance for morning or afternoon. These
class distinctions must have weighed heavily upon
humbler beings, such as countesses ; but perhaps
they consumed more at table to make up for these
after-meal deficiences.

Table manners were a luxury as yet undreamed
of. The use of the fork was a new fashion just
being introduced from France and Spain.

280

A NOTE ON THE PRODUCTION OF
HENRY VIII. AT HIS MAJESTY'S

THEATRE

It will be seen that the period of Henry VIII.
was characterised by great sumptuousncss ; in-
deed, the daily life of the Court was compact of
revels, masques and displays of splendour.

Henry VIII. is largely a pageant play. As such
it was conceived and written ; as such did we
endeavour to present it to the public. Indeed,
it is obvious that it would be far better not to
produce the play at all than to do so without those
adjuncts, by which alone the action of the play
can be illustrated. Of course, it is not possible
to do more than indicate on the stage the sumptu-
ousncss of the period of history covered by the
play ; but it was hoped that an impression would
be conveyed to our own time of Henry in his habit
as he lived, of his people, of the architecture,
and of the manners and customs of that great
age.

It was thought desirable to omit almost in
their entirety those portions of the play which
deal with the Reformation, being
The Text. as they are practically devoid of
dramatic interest and calculated, as
they are, to weary an audience. In taking this
course, I felt the less hesitation as there can be

281

King Henry VIII.

no doubt that all these passages were from the
first omitted in Shakespeare's own representations
of the play.

We have incontrovertible evidence that, in
Shakespeare's time, Henry VIII. was played in
" two short hours."

"... Those that come to see
Only a show or two and so agree
The play may pass. If they be still and willing
I'll undertake may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours."

These words, addressed to the audience in
the prologue, make it quite clear that a con-
siderable portion of the play was considered by
the author to be superfluous to the dramatic
action — and so it is. Acted without any waits
whatsoever, Henry VIII., as it is written, would
take at least three hours and a half in the playing.
Although we were not able to compass the per-
formance within the prescribed " two short hours,"
for we showed a greater respect for the preservation
of the text than did Shakespeare himself, an
attempt was made to confine the absolute spoken
words as nearly as possible within the time pre-
scribed in the prologue.

In the dramatic presentation of the play,
there are many passages of intensely moving
interest, the action and characters are drawn
with a remarkable fidelity to the actualities. As

282

King Henry VIII.

has been suggested, however, the play depends
more largely than do most of Shakespeare's works
on those outward displays to realise which an
attempt was made on the stage.

That Shakespeare, as a stage-manager, availed
himself as far as possible of these adjuncts is only

too evident from the fact that it
Shakespeare was the firing of the cannon which
as Stage caused a conflagration and the con-

Manager. sequent burning down of the Globe

Theatre. The destruction of the
manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays was probably
due to this calamity. The incident shows a
lamentable love of stage-mounting for which some
of the critics of the time no doubt took the poet
severely to task. In connection wath the love of
pageantry which then prevailed, it is well known
that Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were wont to
arrange the masques so much in vogue in their
time.

The Globe Theatre was burnt on June 29th,
1613. Thomas Lorkins, in a letter to Sir Thomas

Puckering on June 30th, says : " No
The Fire. longer since than yesterday, while

Bourbidge his companie were acting
at ye Globe the play of Henry 8, and there shooting
of certayne chambers in way of triumph ; the fire
catch and fastened upon the thatch of ye house
and there burned so furiously as it consumed ye

283

King Henry VIII.

whole house all in lesse than two hours, the
people having enough to doe to save them-
selves."

There are records existing of many other pro-
ductions of Henry VIII. In 1663 it was produced
at Lincoln's Inn Fields as a pageant
Other Pro- play. The redoubtable Mr. Pepys
ductions of visited this production, without ap-
the Play. pearing to have enjoyed the play.

In later contrast with him, old
Dr. Johnson said that whenever Mrs. Siddons
played the part of Katharine, he would " hobble
to the theatre to see her."

In 1707, Henry VIII. was produced at the
Haymarket, with an exceptionally strong cast ;
in 1722 it was done at Drury Lane, in which pro-
duction Booth played Henry VIII.

In 1727 it was again played at Drury Lane.
On this occasion the spectacle of the coronation
of Anne Boleyn was added, on which one scene,
we are told, £1,000 had been expended. It will
come to many as a surprise that so much splendour
and so large an expenditure of money were at that
time lavished on the stage. The play had an
exceptional run of forty nights, largely owing, it
is said, to the popularity it obtained through the
coronation of George IL, which had taken place
a few weeks before.

The play was a great favourite of George II.

i84

King Henry VIII.

and was in consequence frequently revived during
his reign. On being asked by a grave nobleman,
after a performance at Hampton Court, how the
King liked it, Sir Richard Steele replied : " So
terribly well, my lord, that I was afraid I should
have lost all my actors, for I was not sure
the King would not keep them to fill the posts
at Court that he saw them so fit for in the
play."

In 1744, Henry VIII. was given for the first
time at Covent Garden, but was not revived until
1772, when it was announced at Covent Garden
as " ' Henry VIII.,' not acted for 20 years."
The coronation was again introduced.

Queen Katharine was one of Mrs. Siddons'
great parts. She made her first appearance in
this character at Drury Lane in 1788. In 1808
it was again revived, and Mrs. Siddons once
more played the Queen, Kemble appearing as
Wolsey.

In 1822, Edmund Kean made his first appear-
ance as Wolsey at Drury Lane, but the play was
only given four times.

In 1832, the play was revived at Covent Garden
with extraordinary splendour, and a magnificent
cast. Charles Kemble played King Henry ; Mr.
Young, Wolsey ; Miss Ellen Tree, Anne Boleyn ;
and Miss Fanny Kemble appeared for the first
time as Queen Katharine. Miss Kemble's success

285

King Henry VIII.

seems to have been great. We are told that Miss
Ellen Tree, as Anne Boleyn, appeared to great
disadvantage ; " her headdress was the most
frightful and unbecoming thing imaginable, though
we believe it was taken from one of Holbein's."
In those days correctness of costume was considered
most lamentable and most laughable. In this
production, too, the coronation was substituted
for the procession. The criticism adds that
" during the progress of the play the public seized
every opportunity of showing their dislike of the
Bishops, and the moment they came on the stage
they were assailed with hissing and hooting, and
one of the prelates, in his haste to escape from
such a reception, fell prostrate, which excited
bursts of merriment from all parts of the
house."

In 1855, Charles Kean revived the play with his
accustomed care and sumptuousness. In this famous
revival Mrs. Kean appeared as Queen Katharine.

Sir Henry Irving's magnificent production will
still be fresh in the memory of many playgoers.
It was admitted on all hands to be
Irving's an artistic achievement of the highest

Production, kind, and Sir Henry Irving was
richly rewarded by the support of
the public, the play running 203 nights. Miss
Ellen Terry greatly distinguished herself in the
part of Queen Katharine, contributing in a large

286

King Henry VIII.

degree to the success of the produetion. Sir
Henry Irving, in the part of Wolsey, made a deep
impression. Mr. William Terriss played the King.
Mr. Forbes Robertson made a memorable success
in the part of Buckingham ; and it is interesting
to note that Miss Violet Vanbrugh played tlie part
of Anne Boleyn.

An outstanding feature of the Lyceum produc-
tion was Edward German's music. I deemed
myself fortunate that this music
The Music, '^vas available for my production.
It may be mentioned that Mr.
German composed for me some additional numbers,
amongst which is the Anthem sung in the corona-
tion of Anne Boleyn.

I cannot help quoting one passage from Caven-
dish at length to show how closely
Shakespeares Shakespeare keeps to the chronicles
T) f I of his time. It will be found that

Scene 3 of Act I. is practically iden-
tical with the following description : —

The banquets were set forth, with masks and
mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort, and costly manner,
that it was a heaven to behold.

. . . I have seen the king suddenly come in thither
in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments
like shepherds.

. . . And at his coming and before he came into the
hall, ye shall understand that he came by ^Yater to the
water gate, without any noise ; where, against his

287

King Henry VIII.

coming, were laid charged many chambers, and at his
landing they were all shot off, which made such a rumble
in the air, that it was like thunder. It made all the noble-
men, ladies and gentlewomen to muse what it should
mean coming so suddenly, they sitting quietly at a
solemn banquet. Then immediately after this great
shot of guns, the Cardinal desired the Lord Chamberlain,
and Comptroller, to look what this sudden shot should
mean, as though he knew nothing of the matter. They
thereupon looking out of the windows into Thames,
returned again, and showed him, that it seemed to them
there should be some noblemen and strangers arrived
at his bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince.
With that, quoth the Cardinal, " I shall desire you,
because ye can speak French, to take the pains to go
down into the hall to encounter and to receive them,
according to their estates, and to conduct them into
this chamber, where they shall see us, and all these
noble personages sitting merrily at our banquet, desiring
them to sit down with us and to take part of our fare
and pastime." Then they went incontinent down into
the hall, where they received them with twenty new
torches, and conveyed them up into the chamber, with
such a number of drums and fifes as I have seldom seen
together, at one time in any masque. At their arrival
into the chamber, two and two together, they went
directly] before the Cardinal where he sat, saluting him
very reverently, to whom the Lord Chamberlain for
them said : " Sir, forasmuch as they be strangers, and
can speak no English, they have desired me to declare
unto your Grace thus : they, having understanding of
this your triumphant banquet, where was assembled
such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no
less, under the supportation of your good grace, but to
repair hither to view as w^ell their incomparable beauty,
as for to accompany them to mumchance, and then

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King Henry VIII.

after to dance with them, and so to have of them ac-
quaintance. And, sir, they furthermore require of
your Grace licence to accomplish the cause of their
repair." To whom the Cardinal answered, that he
was very well contented they should do so. Then
the masquers went first and saluted all the dames as
they sat, and then returned to the most worthiest.
. . . Then quoth the Cardinal to my Lord Chamber-
lain, " I pray you," quoth he, " show them that it
seemeth me that there should be among them some
noble man, whom I suppose to be much more worthy
of honour to sit and occupy this room and place than
I ; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, surrender
my place according to my duty." Then spake my
Lord Chamberlain, unto them in French, declaring my
Lord Cardinal's mind, and they rounding him again in
the ear, my Lord Chamberlain said to my Lord Cardinal,
" Sir, they confess," quoth he, " that among them
there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace
can appoint him from the other, he is contented to
disclose himself, and to accept your place most worthily."
With that the Cardinal, taking a good advisement
among them, at the last, quoth he, " Me seemeth the
gentleman with the black beard should be even he."
And with that he arose out of his chair, and offered
the same to the gentleman in the black beard, with his
cap in his hand. The person to whom he offered then
his chair w^as Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of
goodly personage, that much more resembled the King's
person in that mask, than any other. The King, hear-
ing and perceiving the Cardinal so deceived in his estima-
tion and choice, could not forbear laughing ; but plucked
down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashed
out with such a pleasant countenance and cheer, that
all noble estates there assembled, seeing the king to be
there amongst them, rejoiced very much.
T 289

King Henry VIII.

If Shakespeare could be so true to the actualities,
why should not we seek to realise the scene so
vividly described by the chronicler and the drama-
tist ?

In my notes and conclusions on " Henry VIII.
and his Court" I have been largely indebted to
the guidance of the following books :

Ernest Law's " History of Hampton Court " ;
Strickland's " Queens of England " ; Taunton's
" Thomas Wolsey, Legate and Reformer " ; and
Cavendish's " Life of Wolsey."

AN APOLOGY AND A FOOTNOTE
Here I am tempted to hark back to the modern
manner of producing Shakespeare, and to say a
few words in extenuation of those methods, which
have been assailed with almost equal brilliancy and
vehemence.

We are told that there are two different kinds
of plays, the realistic and the symbolic. There
are, as a matter of fact, nine and ninety different
kinds of plays ; but let that pass. Grant only
two. Shakespeare's plays, we are assured, belong
to the symbolic category. " The scenery," it is
insisted, " not only may, but should be imperfect."
This seems an extraordinary doctrine, for if it be
right that a play should be imperfectly mounted,
it follows that it should be imperfectly acted,

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King Henry VIII.

and further that it should be imperfectly written.
The modern methods, we are assured, employed
in the production of Shakespeare, do not properly
illustrate the play, but are merely made for vulgar
display, with the rcsvilt of crushing the author
and obscuring his meaning. In this assertion, I
venture to think that our critic is mistaken ; I
claim that not the least important mission of the
modern theatre is to give to the public representa-
tions of history which shall be at once an education
and a delight. To do this, the manager should
avail himself of the best archaeological and
artistic help his generation can afford him,
while endeavouring to preserve what he be-
lieves to be the spirit and the intention of the
author.

It is of course possible for the technically
informed reader to imagine the wonderful and
stirring scenes which form part of the play without
visualising them. It is, I contend, better to
reserve Shakespeare for the study than to see him
presented half-heartedly.

The merely archaic presentation of the play
can be of interest only to those epicures who do
not pay their shilling to enter the theatre. The
contemporary theatre must make its appeal to the
great public, and I hold that while one should
respect every form of art, that art which appeals
only to a coterie is on a lower plane than that

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King Henry VIII.

which speaks to the world. Surely, it is not too
much to claim that a truer and more vivid im-
pression of a period of history can be given by its
representation on the stage than by any other
means of information. Though the archaeologist
with symbolic leanings may cry out, the theatre
is primarily for those who love the drama, who love
the joy of life and the true presentation of history.
It is only secondarily for those who fulfil their souls
in footnotes.

Personally, I have been a sentimental adherent
of symbolism since my first Noak's Ark. Ever
since I first beheld the generous curves of Mrs.
Noah, and first tasted the insidious carmine of her
lips, have I regarded that lady as symbolical of
the supreme type of womanhood. I have learnt
that the most exclusive symbolists, when painting
a meadow, regard purple as symbolical of bright
green ; but we live in a realistic age and have not
yet overtaken the new art of the pale future.
It is difficult to deal seriously with so much earnest-
ness. I am forced into symbolic parable. Artemus
Ward, when delivering a lecture on his great moral
panorama, pointed with his wand to a blur on
the horizon, and said : " Ladies and gentlemen,
that is a horse — the artist who painted that picture
called on me yesterday with tears in his eyes, and
said he would disguise that fact from me no
longer ! " He, too, was a symbolist.

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King Henry VIII.

I hold that whatever may tend to destroy the
illusion and the people's understanding is to be
condemned. Whatever may tend to heighten the
illusion and to help the audience to a better under-
standing of the play and the author's meaning, is
to be commended. Shakespeare and Burbage,
Betterton, Colley Gibber, the Kembles, the Keans,
Phelps, Calvert and Henry Irving, as artists,
recognised that there was but one way to treat
the play of Henry VIII. It is pleasant to sin in
such good company.

I contend that Henry VIII. is essentially a
realistic and not a symbolic play. Indeed, probably
no English author is less " symbolic " than Shake-
speare. Hamlet is a play which, to my mind,
does not suffer by the simplest setting ; indeed, a
severe simplicity of treatment seems to me to assist
rather than to detract from the imaginative develop-
ment of that masterpiece. But I hold that, with
the exception of certain scenes in The Tempest, no
plays of Shakespeare are susceptible to what is
called " symbolic " treatment. To attempt to
present Henry VIII. in other than a realistic
manner would be to ensure absolute failure.
Let us take an instance from the text. By
what symbolism can Shakespeare's stage direc-
tions in the Trial Scene be represented on the
stage ?

" A Hall in Blackfriars. Enter two vergers

293

King Henry VIII.

with short silver wands ; next them two scribes
in the habit of doctors. . . . Next them with
some small distance, follows a gentleman bearing
the purse with the great seal and a Cardinal's hat ;
then two priests bearing each a silver cross ; then
a gentleman *usher bareheaded, accompanied with
a sergeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace ; then
two gentlemen bearing two great silver pillars ;
After them, side by side, the two Cardinals, Wolsey
and Campeius ; two noblemen with the sword and
mace," etc.

I confess my symbolic imagination was com-
pletely gravelled, and in the absence of any symbolic
substitute, I have been compelled to fall back on
the stage directions.

Yet we were gravely told by the writer of an
article that " all Shakespeare's plays " lend them-
selves of course to such symbolic treatment. We
hear, indeed, that the National Theatre is to be
run on symbolic lines. If it be so, then God help
the National Theatre — the symbolists will not.
No " ism " ever made a great cause. The National
Theatre, to be the dignified memorial we all hope it
may be, will owe its birth, its being and its pre-
servation to the artists, who alone are the guardians
of any art. It is the painter, not the frame-maker,
who upholds the art of painting ; it is the poet, not
the book-binder, who carries the torch of poetry,
1 1 was the sculptor, and not the owner of the quarry,

294

King Henry VIII.

who made the Venus of Milo. It is sometimes
necessary to re-assert the obvious.

Now there are plays in which symboHsm is
appropriate — those of Maeterlinck, for instance.
But if, as has been said, Maeterlinck resembles
Shakespeare, Shakespeare does not resemble Maeter-
linck. Let us remember that Shakespeare was a
humanist, not a symbolist.

The end of the play of Henry VIII. once more

illustrates the pageantry of realism, as prescribed

in the elaborate directions as to

The End. the christening of the new-born

princess.

It is this incident of the christening of the future
Queen Elizabeth that brings to an appropriate
close the strange eventful history as depicted in
the play of Henry VIII. And thus the injustice of
the world is once more triumphantly vindicated :
Wolsey, the devoted servant of the King, has crept
into an ignominous sanctuary ; Katharine has
been driven to a martyr's doom ; the adulterous
union has been blessed by the Court of Bishops ;
minor poets have sung their blasphemous paeans
in unison. The offspring of Anne Boleyn, over
whose head the Shadow of the Axe is already
hovering, has been christened amid the acclama-
tions of the mob ; the King paces forth to hold the
child up to the gaze of a shouting populace, accom-
panied by the Court and the Clergy — trumpets

295

King Henry VIII.

blare, drums roll, the organ thunders, cannons
boom, hymns are sung, the joy bells are pealing.
A lonely figure in black enters weeping. It is the
Fool !

:g6

CHRONOLOGY OF PUBLIC EVENTS DURING
THE LIFETIME OF KING HENRY VIII

1491. Birth of Henry, second son of Henry VII. and
Elizabelh of York.

1501. Marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son

of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York,
to Katharine of Aragon, daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

1502. Death of Arthur, Prince of Wales.

1509. Death of King Henry VII.

Marriage of Henry VIII. at Westminster

Abbey with Katharine of Aragon, his

brother's widow.
Thomas Wolsey made King's Almoner.

1511. Thomas Wolsey called to the King's Council.

The Holy League established by the Pope.

1512. War with France.

1513. Battles of the Spurs and of Flodden.

Wolsey becomes Chief Minister.

1516. Wolsey made Legate.

Dissolution of the Holy League.

1517. Luther denounces Indulgences.

1520. Henry meets Francis at " Field of Cloth of

Gold."
Luther burns the Pope's Bull.

1521. Quarrel of Luther with Henry.

Henry's book against Luther presented to

the Pope.
Pope Leo confers on Henry the title " Fidei

Defensor."

297

King Henry VIII.

1522. Renewal of war with France.

1523. Wolsey quarrels with the Commons on question

of 20 per cent, property tax.

1525. Benevolences of one-tenth from the laity and of
one-fourth from clergy demanded.
Exaction of Benevolences defeated.
Peace with France.

1527. Henry resolves on a Divorce.

Sack of Rome.

1528. Pope Clement VH. issues a commission to the

Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio for
a trial of the facts on which Henry's
application for a divorce was based.

1529. Trial of Queen Katharine at Blackfriars Hall.

Katharine appeals to Rome.

Fall of Wolsey. Ministry of Norfolk and

Sir Thomas More.
Rise of Thomas Cromwell.

1530. Wolsey arrested for treason.

Wolsey's death at Leicester Abbey.

1531. Henry acknowledged as " Supreme Head of the

Church of England."

1533. Henry secretly marries Anne Boleyn.

Cranmer, in Archbishop of Canterbury's
Court, declares Katharine's marriage
invalid and the marriage of Henry and
Anne lawful. Anne Boleyn crowned
Queen in Westminster Abbey.
Birth of Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth).

1535. Henry's title as Supreme Head of the Church
incorporated in the royal style by
letters patent.
Execution of Sir Tiiomas More.
298

1536.

1537.

1540.

King Henry VIII.

English Bible issued.

Dissolution of lesser Monasteries.
Death of Katharine of Aragon.
Execution of Anne Boleyn.
Henry's marriage with Jane Seymour.

Birth of Edward VI.

Death of Jane Seymour.
Dissolution of greater Monasteries.

Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves.
Execution of Thomas Cromwell,
Henry divorces Anne of Cleves.
Henry's marriage with Catherine Howard.

1542.

1543.

Execution of Catherine Howard.

Completion of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland.

War with France.

Henry's marriage with Catherine Parr.

1547. Death of Henry. Age 55 years and 7 months.
He reigned 37 years and 9 months.

ON CLOSING THE BOOK THAT
SHAKESPEARE WROTE

ON CLOSING THE BOOK THAT
SHAKESPEARE WROTE

HOW different is the mood in which we
approach Shakespeare when we see his
works acted on the stage, and when we read
them in the privacy of the study !

When " sitting at a play," the recipients of
impressions through the eye and the ear, we
abandon ourselves to the torrent of the dra-
matist's genius, and are borne along without
thought or care of text or readings. In the
magic atmosphere of the theatre, we merely feel
the throb of humanity which beats in the flesh
and blood of the poet's creations. How often
will the actor by a flash of passion illumine a
dark passage which had remained obscure in
the calm twilight of the library !

In the seclusion of the study the case is vastly
different. We become critical, inquisitive, and
at times even destructive. We stop each moment
to try and discover some hidden beauty, the
exact meaning of some obscure allusion, or the

303

On Closing the Book

comparative value of alternative suggestions. It
is impossible to deny that this practice often opens
up to us charms and treasures unhoped for and
unexpected. Unfortunately in such leisurely and
detailed examination of a play we too often
lose sight of the grandeur of its general theme
and scheme; and the author's primary object — to
give a living expression to his work by having it
acted on the stage — is obliterated.

What I would urge, then, is a study of the text
of our great dramatist supplemented, whenever
possible, by a visit to the theatre where the
play under consideration is being performed.
Whether Shakespeare, in writing to supply the
demands of the contemporary stage, intended a
philosophy deeper than can be given forth and
received at one presentation, matters little —
the message of his work will reach us at the
first hearing of an intelligent rendering. And
this should content us. We know that Shake-
speare's plays were primarily, if not exclusively,
meant for the stage ; divorced from it, no full ap-
preciation of the dramatist's genius is obtainable.

When reading the dramas we really only con.
centrate our attention on the words before us, and
give but a passing thought to how those words may
be vitalised by the assistance of the actor's art,
and of the resources at the command of the scene-
painter, the property-master, and the stage-

304

that Shakespeare Wrote

manager. Indeed, a nice examination of his
stage-directions shows that Shakespeare not only
counted upon the potentialities of his own theatre
to give point and life to his text, but that he also,
with the prophetic eye of his genius, foresaw the
time when a later stage would achieve for him,
in the way of scenery, costumes, and effects, what
the playhouse of his own day was powerless to
accomplish. Nearly all the dramas are crowded
with scenic directions, and although very few of
these could have been carried out to the letter in
the author's time, those that were attempted must
even then have been telling and effective. It is
no doubt true that of scenery strictly so called
there was next to nothing on the Elizabethan
stage ; but there was machinery — rough machinery
possibly — and on this Shakespeare counted much
as a complement to his spoken words. Are not the
ghost scenes in Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard III.
among the most dramatic that he wrote ? And do
not the visicms of Brutus, Queen Katharine, and
Joan of Arc afford some of the most moving that
can be taken out of Shakespeare's book and put
upon the boards ? Yet all these depended on the
machinery, or, as we should now term them, the
" scenic effects " of the presentation. Again, look
how much Shakespeare relied upon the employment
of big masses of troops and attendants, and how
largely he trusted to their proper grouping and
u 305

On Closing the Book

training for some of his most striking results.
To quote only three familiar examples — the siege
operations in Henry V., the parley outside the walls
of Anglers in King John, and the Forum Scene in
Julius Ccesar. Let anyone carefully consider
this last : how inadequately do the mere words
of Antony — eloquent as they are — convey the
impression intended by the poet ! The breath of
the surging multitude is necessary to fill out the
sails of his splendid rhetoric. Once we have seen
this realised, we return to a perusal of the poet
with our imagination aflame with the memory
of the howling, shifting mob which the stage has
presented to our senses.

In considering the works of Shakespeare as a
whole, it is a matter of some wonderment and of
no less regret that no real observation of child-life
is to be found in the great master's writings. He
has given us thirty-five plays, averaging perhaps
twenty characters in each, and yet (with the ex-
ception of the purely fantastic fairy element of
the Midsummer Nighfs Dream) only seven of
his works contain very youthful characters, and
their number in all amounts to but eleven. There
is Moth in Love's Labour's Lost ; four children
in Richard III. ; two in Macbeth ; the page to
Falstaff in Henry IV. and Henry V. ; Mamillius
in The Winter's Tale ; and Prince Henry and
Prince Arthur in King John. Prince Arthur, how-

306

that Shakespeare Wrote

ever, although by age but a boy, appears, by the
passion and dignity with which he is presented,
as a full-grown man, and appeals to us by his
sufferings and his sayings rather as an adult than
an adolescent. His boyhood is taken from him
by reason of the great political struggle of which
he is the centre, and no one who listens to his words
can possibly gather that it is a child who speaks.
In fact, whenever in a play of Shakespeare we
have children upon the stage, it is through the
tragedy of their existence that they figure. It
may be urged that children are seldom real upon
the stage, and that our greatest dramatist, Avith
his unerring skill, was the first to detect their
lack of the dramatic faculty. Yet having given
them at all, it is impossible to understand why
Shakespeare did not utilise them more than
he did as the embodiment of what is bright and
joyful and innocent in life ; and we can but feel,
whatever the reason may have been for this omis-
sion, that herein a great opportunity was neglected
by the writer, and a great revelation withheld
from the reader and the theatre-goer.

The plays of Shakespeare most suitable for
stage representation are those which contain
a strong love interest; those which rely on
our philosophy, or deal with history, have not
the same abiding appeal. Probably the plays
which are most popular to-day were also the most

307

On Closing the Book

popular in Shakespeare's own age ; but whereas
in Elizabeth's time the spectators were chiefly
men, women are the determining factor in the
theatre of to-day. It is the lack of the love
element which causes such plays as Timon of
Athens to be so rarely seen upon the modern stage.
Yet that the intellectual interest, as apart from the
sentimental, can be awakened nowadays is proved
by the fact that two recent productions in which
the love interest is almost entirely absent were
popular successes — Julius Ccesar and King John.

In reading Shakespeare's works we feel how
thorouglily the same is human nature under all
its trappings and in all places. Though he is
careless about details, he never strikes a false
note ; his noble Romans are Romans, and his
Greeks are Greeks. He has consulted his author-
ities wisely and well, and been as true as the
knowledge of his age enabled him to be. But his
types are, before all, men and women, and all
different each from the other. They all live.
Beatrice and Benedick, Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio
and Shylock, are more to us than the acquaintance
to whom we bow in the street, or the friend at whose
table we dine. The world they live in seems more
probable than the medley of contradictions of which
life is made up. It is the poet who gives " artistic
merit " to his subject in portraying a king or a
cobbler. The monarch of Shakespeare's pen is

308

that Shakespeare Wrote

often truer to life than the actual man who ate
and drank, and woke and slept, and hoped and
feared, and loved and hated. Yet Shakespeare is
always impersonal and impartial in the drawing of
his characters. His own predilections are never
forced upon the listener. To each he gives the
vices of his virtues and the virtues of his
vices. It is this daring blending of the good
and the bad that gives to his characters that truth
which the courageous and inspired artist alone is
capable of breathing into them. History rarely
gives us the true man — it often merely records
his actions without revealing to us the motives
which inform those actions ; but the poet reveals
through the Rontgen rays of his genius the hidden
depths of the inner man. It is possible to conceive,
therefore, that the King Richard and the King
John of Shakespeare were more true to life than
were the counterfeit presentments of history —
subject as these records are to the misrepresenta-
tions of flatterers and detractors, and subject as
are the individuals themselves to self-deception
and hypocrisy. Autobiographies are seldom self-
revelations. Even Mr. Pepys' candour was prob-
ably not intended for posthumous consumption. It
may, then, truly be said that the creatures of the
poet's imagination are our most intimate friends
rather than the men and women among whom we
move ; and that we win from the perusal of the
u* 309

On Closing the Book

characters so faithfully drawn a greater insight into
our common humanity than can be gained from the
snapshots of everyday life. When we study Shake-
speare to his depths, we find in his works the key
to the myriad cells of the human heart. The longer
we look into the mirror which he holds up to us,
the more luminously do we see the reflection of
om'selves in infinite variety.

FINAL AFTER THOUGHT

As Homer's songs were immortalised through
being sung by father to son, by lover to lover, so
does Shakespeare's spirit live not in the printed
tomes alone, nor in the musty volumes which hold
the countless comments of literary pedants — it lives
most triumphantly (/ am so bold as to assert) in
his irresponsible heirs, Shakespeare's love-children,
who sing his songs to each succeeding generation in
its own voice, and will yet carry his message to
states unborn in accents yet unknown.

As it is the players chiefest joy to speak the
poeVs words upon the stage, so is it his high privi-
lege to trace upon the poet's abiding monument
his own feting name. This modest ambition is
my book's apology.

3"

FINI S

SHAKESPEAREAN PLAYS PIIODUCED UNDER.
HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE)5 MANAGEMENT

AT THE HAYMARKET THEATRE
1889. The Merry Wives of Windsor.
1892. Hamlet.
1896. King Henry IV. (Part I.)

AT HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE

f Hamlet (revival).

^397 I Katherine and Petruchio, being Garrick's
' 1 abbreviated version of The Taming of the

\ Shrew.

1898. Julius Caesar.

1899. King John.

1900 I ^ Midsummer Night's Dream.

■ ( Julius Caesar (revival).

1901. Twelfth Night.

1902. Twelfth Night (revival).

The Merry Wives of Windsor (revival).

1903. King Richard II.

The Merry Wives of Windsor (revival).

3'3

1904. The Tempest.

Twelfth Night (revival).

The Merry Wives of Windsor (revival).

^905. Much Ado about Nothing.

First Annual Shakespeare Festival :

King Richard II.

Twelfth Night.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Hamlet.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Julius Ceesar.
The Tempest (revival).

1906. The Winter's Tale.
Antony and Cleopatra.

Second Annual Shakespeare Festival :

The Tempest.

Hamlet.

King Henry lY. (Part I.)

Julius Csesar.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Twelfth Night.
King Richard II. (revival).

1907. Third Annual Shakespeare Festival :

The Tempest.
The Winter's Tale.
Hamlet.
Twelfth Night.
Julius Caesar.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Berlin Visit:

King Richard II.
Twelfth Night.

314

1907. Berlin Visit:

Antony and Cleopatra.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Hamlet.

1908. The Merchant of Venice.

Fourth Annual Shakespeare Festival :
The Merry Wives of Windsor (revival).
The Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.
Hamlet.

1909. Fifth Annual Shakespeare Festival :

King Richard III. (Mr. F. R. Benson and

Company.)
Twelfth Night.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Hamlet.
Julius Csesar.
The Merchant of Venice.
Macbeth. (Mr. Arthur Bourchier's Company.)

1910. Sixth Annual Shakespeare Festival :

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Julius Cxsar.

Twelfth Night.

Hamlet. (By His Majesty's Theatre Company

and by Mr. H. B. Irving's Company.)
The Merchant of Venice. (By His Majesty's

Theatre Company and by Mr. Arthur

Bourchier's Company.)
King Lear. (Mr. Herbert Trench's Company.)
The Taming of the Shrew. (Mr. F. R. Benson

and Company.)
Coriolanus. (Mr. F. R. Benson and Company.)
Two Gentlemen of Verona. (The Elizabethan

Stage Society's Company.)

315

1910. King Henry V. (Mr. Lewis Waller and Com-

pany.)
King Richard II.
Scenes from Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet.

King Henry VIII.

1911. Macbeth.

Seventh Annual Shakespeare Festival :
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Hamlet. (Mr. H. B. Irving and Company.)
Julius Caesar.
As You Like It. (Mr. Oscar Asche and

Co'mpany.)
The Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.

King Richard III. (Mr. Benson and Company.)
The Taming of the Shrew. (Mr. Benson and

Company.)
King Henry VIII.
The Merry Wives of Windsor.

1912. Othello.

Eighth Annual Shakespeare Festival :
The Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.
King Henry VIII.
Othello.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Julius Caesar.

1913. Ninth Annual Shakespeare Festival:

The Merchant of Venice. , ,

Twelfth Night.
Julius Caesar.
Romeo and Juliet.

Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.

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